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Coskata Press Conference
April 25, 2008

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On Friday, April 25, 2008, Coskata announced that its new pilot plant would be located at the Westinghouse Plasma Center in Madison, Pennsylvania, the current site of a pilot-plant gasifier.

Interestingly enough, GM, Coskata’s partner, has former ties to Westinghouse that date back a quarter of a century.

Back In 1983, the GM Central Foundry Division collaborated in part with the Westinghouse Electric Corp., now known as the Westinghouse Plasma Corporation (WPC), to develop a high-volume plasma torch furnace. This new torch furnace was called a plasma arc cupola, and it could more flexibly produce molten iron used to make automotive engine blocks, crankshafts and brake components.

GM’s first application of plasma torch technology was in 1989 at its foundry in Defiance, Ohio.

Guess what? It’s being used today to help Coskata’s gasification process.

Gasification is the first step in Coskata’s process to make ethanol out of practically any renewable source. Plasma torches will be used to super heat source material, such as agricultural and municipal solid waste, to 1,600 degrees Fahrenheit, which creates a synthesis gas comprised of carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide and hydrogen. The gas is cooled to about 100 degrees Fahrenheit and then is consumed by Coskata’s patented microorganisms, which excrete ethanol and some water.

Coskata will use a Marc-3 plasma torch at its Madison facility - Japan has used this same style torch for more than five years to gasify municipal solid waste. Larger Marc-11 plasma torches will be used at Coskata’s future commercial scale plants. The Marc-11s have been proven in metallurgical and waste-to-energy commercial applications all over the world.

Over the course of 25 years, GM’s partnership with Westinghouse has grown from the simple desire to streamline an iron process to the hope that it can help meet future energy needs.

It would have been impossible for anyone to have predicted that these torches would help make ethanol, but this process could substantially change the biofuel landscape in the foreseeable future.

Additional Information:

Coskata Inc. has been named one of the 50 most innovative companies in the world by Technology Review, the journal of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Technology Review published its first annual list of the 50 most innovative companies in February, 2010, spanning the fields of energy, computing, the Web, biomedicine, and materials, each company on the list was evaluated based on its business model, strategies for deploying and scaling up its technologies, and the likelihood of success. Each company excelled not only at inventing technology, but also at using it to transform how we live and work. Coskata earns this recognition alongside other companies such as Apple, Google, and Twitter.

GM announced its partnership with Coskata in early 2008 to use the company's breakthrough technology, which affordably and efficiently makes ethanol from practically any renewable source, including garbage, old tires and plant waste.

"We invested in Coskata so that we could enable the rapid deployment of commercially viable and environmentally sustainable ethanol globally," said Bob Babik, GM Vehicle Emissions director. "We have already accepted some of Coskata’s ethanol at our Milford Proving Grounds for testing."

Globally, GM has produced more than 5.5 million flex-fuel vehicles to date. In the U.S. alone, there are more than 4 million GM flex-fuel cars and trucks on the road. For the 2010 model year, there are 17 E85-capable flex-fuel vehicles from the Chevrolet, Cadillac, Buick and GMC brands. GM is on track to make more than half of its vehicle production E85 flex-fuel capable by 2012.

Learn more about Coskata’s process in this video

Click here to listen to Bill Roe, CEO of Coskata, talk about alternative fuel solutions

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