Coskata's newly opened flex-ethanol plant uses wood chips as raw material in the production of second generation biofuel.

Coskata's newly-opened semi-commercial flex ethanol plant in Madison, Pennsylvania uses wood chips as main raw material in the production of second generation biofuel. The plant is intended to show off just how far Coskata has come since emerging from stealth mode almost two years ago.

The Lighthouse plant, as it is known, follows the Horizon integrated processing plant that started in 2008 and precedes the Flagship plant that is due for 2012 at a location somewhere in the Southeast US. The location for the Flagship plant has been selected, but Coskata will not specify where it will be until it can talk more specifically about the financing arrangements involved for the 55-million-gallon-per-year plant that will use forest residue and other woody biomass.

Coskata says the Flagship will be "the first commercially-viable, feedstock-flexible ethanol facility." The company has not taken any government money to date, but they may apply for DOE loan guarantees for the Flagship plant. Coskata will also not expand this Madison Lighthouse facility. In fact, they're only located there as a guest and will leave when the contract is up. The facility is modular and will actually be dismantled and trucked to the Flagship location in the future.

Flex ethanol is the term Coskata is using for ethanol that can be made with almost any feedstock, i.e., ethanol made using the Coskata process. As we've heard since day one, the plasma torches and microorganisms can turn everything from tires to coal to municipal waste into ethanol. Flexible inputs = flex ethanol.

Making flex ethanol is fast, too. Coskata CEO Bill Roe said that it takes "just minutes" to go from feedstock to ethanol. The Coskata process is continuous, not a batch process, and the entire team in Madison was clear that there are no longer any technical hurdles to overcome in order to start full-scale cellulosic ethanol production using this system.

Coskata used to say that it would be able to make (not sell) ethanol for $1 a gallon. At the plant unveiling in Madison, that number was not mentioned a single time. Instead, Richard Fish from Alter NRG (home to the Westinghouse Plasma Corporation and a partner to Coskata) said that the Coskata system is able to produce ethanol at "a very competitive price" compared to the market as a whole.

Roe explained that the exact cost depends on the feedstock going into the gasifier. Municipal waste will get you ethanol that costs much less than a dollar a gallon, virgin hardwood would cost you much more (but anyone using that particular feedstock is of questionable sanity).

In any case, Coskata doesn't see itself really competing with other renewable energy companies - "We need a lot of producers in this industry," said Coskata CMO Wes Bolsen. "I don't see anyone in the biofuel industry as a competitor" - and has its sights set on gasoline. As long as Coskata ethanol can be made cheaper than gasoline - which requires that oil costs something in the area of $65 a barrel and that producers can get biomass for $50 a dry ton - the company thinks it has a winner.

Source: Autoblog