Ag company Syngenta and ethanol producer Quad County Corn Processors have joined the Advanced Biofuels Business Council, formerly known as the Advanced Ethanol Council. The group’s mission is to help its members speak with one voice to put the advanced bio-refining industry in the best position to succeed.
Syngenta and Quad County Corn Processors (QCCP) are engaged in a collaboration to license Cellerate, a revolutionary, new enhancing technology that can help ethanol plants convert corn kernel fiber into cellulosic ethanol. The corn fiber ethanol pathway is approved by U.S. EPA as an RFS-eligible cellulosic biofuel. QCCP owns and operates an ethanol plant in Galva, Iowa, and is one of the leading developers of cellulosic ethanol production technology through its wholly-owned subsidiary Cellulosic Ethanol Technologies, LLC.
“The cellulosic biofuels industry is breaking through at commercial scale, and it is critical for the industry to remain unified when it comes to how we engage on policy and regulatory matters,” said Brooke Coleman, executive director of the ABBC. “Syngenta and QCCP are highly engaged on both the business and political fronts, and we look forward to working with them on strategies that will help the industry succeed in 2015 and beyond.”
In addition to enabling plants to increase production by up to 6 percent, Cellerate can help ethanol producers increase the protein content of dried distillers grains to as much as 40 percent and increase total yield of distillers corn oil up to 1.2 pounds per bushel. QCCP is currently on track to annually produce 2 million gallons of cellulosic ethanol via the Cellerate process.
“We are very excited about our ability to develop a cellulosic biofuel technology that increases ethanol throughput and corn oil extraction while reducing energy input and carbon emissions,” said Delayne Johnson, chief executive officer of QCCP. “It is this type of value proposition that makes the future of cellulosic ethanol so bright.”