ClearFuels Technology, Inc., headquartered in Aiea, Hawaii, announced today that it will receive an additional $19.7 million from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) for a biomass gasification project in Colorado.
The funds represent the remaining portion of a $23 million conditional grant offered to the company to help build a demonstration scale gasifier. The unit will produce syngas from biomass for conversion into renewable diesel and jet fuels.
The syngas will be processes into fuel at Rentech’s (NYSE AMEX: RTK) Product Demonstration Unit at the Rentech Energy Technology Center in Colorado.
The grant will facilitate the integration of ClearFuels’ biomass-to-synthesis gas technology with Rentech’s Fisher-Tropsch Process. This integrated bio-refinery is anticipated to be completed in late 2011.
Commercial scale ClearFuels-Rentech bio-refineries are anticipated to be designed with the flexibility to produce both renewable synthetic diesel and jet fuels from multiple clean biomass feedstocks including bark, sawdust, woodchips, sugarcane bagasse, cane trash, corn stover and mixtures of clean biomass.
In the near term, ClearFuels is focusing on commercial production of renewable jet and diesel fuels with Rentech, which has a 25% strategic investment in ClearFuels. In the longer term, ClearFuels said it is working on technology integration with companies ranging from Rentech on the thermo-chemical pathway, to Amyris on the biological pathway.
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