Edeniq, with its partner Usina Vale, a Brazilian sugar and ethanol producer, has begun to engineer and construct a bagasse to sugars demonstration-scale plant. The biorefinery will produce cellulosic sugars from sugarcane bagasse and then convert it into ethanol. The plant will handle up to 20 tons per day of bagasse and will be co-located at Usina Vale’s ethanol and sugar production site in São Paulo State, Brazil. One goal of the project is to demonstrate how sugarcane mills can economically increase ethanol production with Edeniq’s bolt-on technologies.
After a feasibility study was completed, Usina Vale signed a collaboration agreement with Edeniq under which they are jointly funding the bagasse to sugar demonstration-scale plant, believed to be the first of its kind in the region. Co-locating the demo plant at Usina Vale’s commercial site will accelerate the technology scale-up from demo to full-scale, and the technology will then be deployed at affiliated ethanol plants.
“Brazil has a large and growing demand for ethanol,” said Pedro Augusto Menezes de Toledo Florencio, CEO of Usina Vale. “We believe Edeniq’s technology will allow us to increase ethanol production in a very economical way, allowing us to meet the growing demand of our customers and our country.”
According to Edeniq, their technologies efficiently break down biomass to liberate cellulosic sugars that can be converted into ethanol and other products. Edeniq owns and operates a fully integrated two ton per day pilot plant in Visalia, California, in partnership with Logos Technologies, using its proprietary Cellunator, which mechanically pre-treats biomass so that it can be more easily converted to sugars, increasing sugar yield and thus driving an increase in ethanol yield. The Brazil plant will also include this technology.
“Through this partnership with Usina Vale, we are further demonstrating our model of increasing the efficiency, scalability and sustainability of biofuels through low capital and operating cost technologies that can be integrated directly into existing ethanol production sites,” added Brian Thome, President and CEO of Edeniq. “Edeniq is developing the lowest cost route to cellulosic sugars, which will lead to low cost ethanol production for our partners like Usina Vale.”