Range Fuels has announced that it has received private financing totaling over $100 million to complete the construction of the first phase of its commercial cellulosic ethanol plant located near the town of Soperton, Georgia. The first phase of construction for the Soperton Plant is targeted to produce approximately 20 million gallons of ethanol and mixed alcohols per year and is scheduled for completion in 2009.
Range Fuels uses a thermo-chemical process compared to most competing cellulosic processes which use biochemical technology.
The company will use woody biomass in the form of sustainably harvested forest trees and waste materials from Georgia forests.
Featured are RFA Vice Chairman Tom Branhan of 
The innovative technology allows ethanol plants to recycle and reuse wastewater streams as an alternative to discharge.
The almost 14-acre tract is filled with corn stubble today. But construction, to be done by Process Concepts of Pevely, MO, will begin soon. PCSE qualified for the Missouri Department of Agriculture’s Producer Incentive program last October. Under those guidelines, the state will pay PCSE 30-cents per gallon on the first 15 mgy of biodiesel created during the first five years of operation. One of the conditions of the incentive, however, is that the plant must be producing biodiesel by March 1, 2009. It is estimated the plant could be completed in 10 months.
“We’re always cautious when we review the March projections, because they are made before any seeds really enter the ground,” said Ron Litterer, NCGA president. “The corn acreage projections also have a tendency to go up. Last year, for example, there was a difference of more than 3 million acres between the March estimate and the final number.” Litterer pointed out USDA’s March report has underestimated actual corn acres in the each of the last four years.
In Michael Grunwald’s March 27 article “The Clean Energy Scam,” corn-based ethanol is the scapegoat of the week. Though Grunwald draws attention to the vitally important need for evaluation of global land-use changes, the environmental finger pointing at corn-based ethanol by his sources has come to the point of ridiculous.
The nuptials of 
VeraSun announced that the merger with US BioEnergy was approved by a majority vote of shareholders of both companies and is effective April 1, 2008.
Because we do lots of interviews and generate quite a bit of audio here at Domestic Fuel and because we are broadcasters by training, we thought it was about time we started our own podcast. 
Our first podcast features aerospace engineer and author Robert Zubrin, who has been getting some media attention lately for his book, 
USDA’s highly anticipated 
According to the