SunOpta plans to develop 10 million gallon per year cellulosic ethanol plant

SunOpta Inc. recently announced that SunOpta BioProcess Inc. (SBI) has signed a Letter of Intent with Central Minnesota Ethanol Co-op (CMEC) of Little Falls, Minnesota to complete a feasibility analysis and engineering study leading to the parties jointly building, owning, and operating a 10 million gallon per year cellulosic ethanol plant.

The proposed operation is expected to be located adjacent to CMEC's existing 21.5 million gallon per year corn starch to ethanol plant, will use local wood chips as raw material feedstock, and is dependent upon completion of final engineering and definitive agreements.

Leveraging SBI's extensive intellectual property portfolio, including existing and recently filed patent applications and 30 years of experience in biomass processing, this plant is expected to be one of the first commercially viable cellulosic ethanol plants in the world.

The plant will utilize SBI proprietary and patented technology together with CMEC's existing infrastructure, raw material supply sources and operational expertise.

The critical "pretreatment" process step will utilize SBI's proprietary auto hydrolysis process, which uses only heat and steam to pre-treat and partially hydrolyze lignocellulosic materials.

In this process, no external chemical catalyst is required and water contained in the raw material feedstock is efficiently utilized, eliminating the need for large external water sources.

SBI's proprietary and patented pretreatment technology, widely known as "steam explosion," has been industrially proven in continuous operation in a variety of commercial-scale applications, and is currently being utilized in a number of commercial demonstration cellulosic ethanol facilities around the world.

The proposed plant will be initially designed to produce 10 million gallons of cellulosic ethanol per year, with anticipated modular scale-up plans to expand the plant to over 50 million gallons per year.

The plant will be environmentally friendly and use locally contracted woodchips as the cellulose source, with residual lignin serving as fuel stock for an energy efficient gasification and co- generation system that will provide the required power for both the corn starch and cellulosic ethanol operations.

Murray Burke, President of SBI commented, "We are delighted to be partnering with CMEC and anticipate powerful synergies with CMEC's management and operations expertise, excellent existing infrastructure and strong community relationships. We expect the planned cellulosic ethanol facility to be one of the first of its kind in the world, bringing the commercial production of cellulosic ethanol to reality. This venture is consistent with SBI's long-term strategy of leveraging our proprietary technology in the ownership and operation of leading edge cellulosic ethanol operations."


This article is reproduced with kind permission of Clean Edge News. Originally published 20 Nov 2007.