Overland Park, Kansas [RenewableEnergyAccess.com] To help increase needed supplies of ethanol and other renewable fuels, Black & Veatch has launched Clean Energy Technologies LLC (CET) to modify and optimize an early stage biogasification technology concept originally proposed by Pearson Technologies of Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
The parties have engineered the new CET Process for use in renewable fuel production. Later CET will license the technology to others for development, engineering and construction. Unlike conventional fermentation processes which are dependent upon grains or other costly feedstocks, the CET Process uses abundant carbonaceous materials, such as corn stover, switchgrass, wood waste and other types of biomass and plant waste materials, to produce a syngas that is catalytically converted to ethanol or other higher value products. The CET process has been short listed for the award of a U.S. Government grant for the demonstration of a commercial integrated biorefinery plant. CET will be commercializing the process through this government demonstration project or through an alternative project in the near future. “If the United States is going to make a paradigm shift toward large-scale ethanol and other alternative fuels production, it will have to happen by using much more than corn kernels alone,” said Ted Pintcke, Vice President of Business Development for Black & Veatch’s energy business. “It will require using the whole corn stalk, as well as other plant waste biomass. That’s what makes this technology so exciting.” “The U.S. Administration recently called for annual ethanol production to increase about 300 percent to 35 billion gallons by 2017 to reduce demand for imported oil,” said Dean Oskvig, President and CEO of Black & Veatch’s global energy business. “The CET Process is vital in helping reach that goal.”
