Smart Energy News

Pasadena, Texas – KiOR, a biofuels company, has obtained loans totaling $75 million from its original founder and investor, Khosla Ventures, along with Alberta Investment Management, a fund owned by the province of Alberta, Canada.

KiOR was founded in 2007 by Khosla Ventures and a group of catalyst scientists seeking to make renewable fuels from cellulosic biomass through a one-step catalytic process.

In early 2010, KiOR’s demonstration unit was installed, representing a 400 times scale up from its pilot. With the demonstration plant’s capacity to process 10 dry tons of wood and produce up to 15 barrels of product per day, a commercial unit would be less than 50 times further scale up, according to the company.

KiOR says it is continuing to make progress on its commercial plant in Columbus, which is slated to open in the second half of 2012. The company is also planning for larger, 1,500 BDT per day, standard commercial production facilities.

Image credit: KiOR

KiOR’s SEC filing

KiOR website

Hayward, Calif. — Paul Angelico, most recently a principal at the management consulting firm The Dover Group, has been named chief operating officer of Aurora Algae, a venture-capital-backed producer of algae-based products for the pharmaceutical, nutrition, aquaculture and fuels markets.

Angelico will oversee operations at the company’s Hayward, Calif. headquarters, as well as its algae fuel production demonstration facility in Karratha, Western Australia. His responsibilities will also include leading the engineering, construction and operations of Aurora Algae’s full-scale production facility in Maitland, Western Australia, which is scheduled to break ground in the fourth quarter of this year.

Angelico started his management career in 1978 as an operations manager at a Procter & Gamble’s consumer goods manufacturing facility. In 1994, he co-founded Twin Rivers Technologies, which purchased the manufacturing facility from Procter & Gamble, and established an oleochemical refining business operating a 160 million pound refinery.

Founded in 2006, Aurora Algae plans to sell biodiesel made from algae to Western Australia’s rapidly growing mining industry. The company has raised about $40 million in venture capital is close to raising another additional $100 million this year, in anticipation of an initial public offering, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.

According to Aurora, the company’s process can produce especially cost-competitive fuels by extracting Omega-3 oils from its algae, which it will then sell to the dietary supplements and pharmaceutical industries.

Photo credit: Aurora Algae

Aurora Algae website

Lakewood, Colo. – ZeaChem, a developer of biorefineries that convert renewable biomass into fuels and chemicals, announced today it has obtained a $233 million loan guarantee from the U.S. Department of Agriculture for the financing and construction of ZeaChem’s first commercial-scale cellulosic biorefinery.

Located at the Port of Morrow in Boardman, Ore., adjacent to ZeaChem’s 250,000 gallons-per-year (GPY) integrated demonstration biorefinery, the new plant that will produce bio-based fuels and chemicals from woody biomass and agricultural residues. It is expected to have capacity of 25 million or more GPY.

ZeaChem’s first commercial facility will create 188 direct construction jobs and 65 full-time operations jobs, plus an additional 242 indirect jobs for construction and full-time operations, according to the company.

Founded in 2002, ZeaChem has developed a cellulose-based biorefinery platform that extracts energy from biomass feedstocks. The company’s refining system uses a hybrid process of biochemical and thermochemical processing, with no new organisms.

In addition to its headquarters in Lakewood, Colo., the company operates a research and development laboratory facility in Menlo Park.

Investors in ZeaChem include Birchmere Ventures, PrairieGold Venture Partners, Firelake Capital, Mohr Davidow Ventures, Globespan Capital Partners, and Spring Ventures.

Photo credit: ZeaChem

ZeaChem website

Welcome, Minn. — Easy Energy Systems (EES), a privately held, development-stage maker of systems for producing ethanol fuel from a variety of non-food feestocks, has raised $350,000 in equity investment, the beginning of an open-ended funding round, according to a new filing by the company with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Having begun work on its technology system in 2005, EES has recently expanded its operations to include executive offices in Scottsdale, Ariz. The company says it plans to create over 450 jobs between its three facilities.

EES’ systems create energy using various forms of organic waste, energy crops and more. According to the company, its systems are completely automated and scalable, allowing farmers, municipalities and governments to create and maintain energy plants of any size that both reduce local organic waste and produce clean, sustainable energy.

In EES’ process, feedstock is mixed with water and enzymes, heated and prepared for complex sugar breakdown and fermentation. Yeast is added to the mixture and allowed to ferment, resulting in a beer-like mixture of alcohol (ethanol) and solids.

The ethanol is separated from the solids and continues through the distillation system. In most cases, remaining solids can be repurposed into distillers grains, fertilizer or animal feed, according to EES.

Image credit: Easy Energy Systems

Easy Energy Systems website

EES’ new SEC filing

Roselle, Illinois – LanzaTech, a privately held developer of technology for producing low-carbon fuels and chemicals from waste gases, has raised $55.8 million in its third round of venture capital, which was led by the Malaysian Life Sciences Capital Fund.

Founded in 2005, LanzaTech develops technology for the production of alcohols and chemicals from waste gas resources that are completely outside the food value chain. In the company’s process, alcohols are converted into jet fuel that is equivalent to petroleum jet fuel, or that can be blended with petroleum, according to the company.

LanzaTech was recently awarded a $3 million contract by the United States Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to accelerate commercial availability of its alcohol-based jet fuel.

Under the FAA award, LanzaTech will use heavy industry gases and synthesis gas derived from lignin, a byproduct of cellulosic ethanol, which would open up a new biomass waste stream for making economic jet fuel, the company said.

A key goal of the project is to produce 100 or more gallons of alternative jet fuel for testing by the US Air Force Research Laboratory. LanzaTech is partnering in the project with Imperium and Battelle, which will assess potential U.S. commercial production sites and resources.

Additional investors in LanzaTech include PETRONAS, the national oil company of Malaysia; Dialog Group, a Malaysian technical services provider to the oil, gas and petrochemical industry; Khosla Ventures; Qiming Venture Partners; and K1W1.

Image credit: LanzaTech

LanzaTech website