Food, Minerals, BioProcess. BIO PROCESS INC.
Bioprocessing and biomass conversion of cellulosic raw materials into value-added products, including cellulosic ethanol, cellulosic butanol, xylitol and dietary fibers from straw, oat hulls, wood and corn stover.

Coskata’s technology first gasifies biomass into syngas and then adds proprietary microbes that turn the syngas into ethanol. The company is currently producing cellulosic ethanol in its labs and plans to scale up a pilot project in Madison, Penn.,

The company began construction in November 207 of its first 20 million-gallon-per-year phase of a commercial ethanol plant in Soperton, Ga., with plans to finish sometime in 2009. Range Fuel’s technology uses a thermochemical process to turn biomass into synthetic gas and then fuel.

The company is expanding its 50 million-gallon-per-year corn-based ethanol facility in Emmetsburg, Iowa, to include a cellulosic plant. The entire plant will produce 125 million gallons per year, 25 million of those for cellulosic ethanol.

The joint venture plans to have its first pilot plant online by 2009 and its first full-scale commercial demonstration plant operational by 2012. A 50/50 JV between DuPont and Genencor, the companies plan to invest $70 million each over the next three years.

Mascoma and the University of Tennessee are jointly building a switchgrass-fed demo refinery in Monroe County, Tenn., that will produce 5 million gallons per year and will be operational in 2009. The company also started construction on a pilot plant in Rome, N.Y., in 2006.

The company has a test facility at its headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif., where it says it has successfully brewed its first liter of ethanol from poplar trees. ZeaChem is working with forest manager GreenWood Resources to build a 1.5 million gallons a year test facility near Portland, Ore.

The company says it aims to have a pilot plant in operation in 2009 and is reportedly also building a 2.5 million-gallon-per-year demonstration facility

The company is working on a 3.1 million-gallon-per-year cellulosic ethanol facility that will be delivered in a joint effort with contractors MECS and Brinderson and located at a Lancaster, Calif., The company trades on OTC, ticker: BFRE.

Owned by Spanish engineering company Abengoa, the company opened a pilot plant in York, Neb., in October 2007, which cost some $35 million to build.

The Canadian company is planning on building a cellulosic ethanol refinery in Saskatchewan that has now entered the due diligence process. Iogen is one of six companies that could receive money from the DOE to build U.S. biorefinery plants.