Alliance Bio-Products Inc., a subsidiary of Alliance BioEnergy Plus Inc., made another step bringing it closer to commercializing its cellulosic ethanol technology. The company announced it has entered into an option agreement with the Indian River County solid waste disposal district to secure its processed vegetative waste. The agreement is contingent on Alliance Bio-Products acquiring a closed biofuel facility within 180 days. Alliance has made a bid to acquire the IneosBio Indian River Bioenergy Center at Vero Beach, Florida.

Under the agreement, the county will deliver vegetative waste, including yard and agricultural waste, to the plant without a fee, making the disposal service free of charge to the country while providing the company with a no-cost feedstock.

"We look forward to working with Indian River County in our efforts to create a cleaner energy that simultaneously reduces carbon footprint and disposes of the county's waste in a productive manner," said Benjamin Slager, chief technology officer, Alliance Bio-Products, Inc. "Not only do we have the opportunity to reuse the county's waste, which would otherwise take up valuable space in local landfills, we also have the capability and technology to transform that waste into products and eco-friendly fuel which could be of value to local residents. Together, the county and the company can benefit from this partnership with cleaner energy, new jobs and reduced waste."

Earlier, Alliance Bio-Products announced its 506(c) filing to raise $10 million to purchase the Vero Beach facility. "The bioethanol market shows significant potential due to its ability to address a number of growing concerns including environmental best practices and its ability to minimize greenhouse gasses while dealing with our nations rapidly growing waste issues," Jim Brown, president, said in the Alliance Bio-Products news release. "As the market grows, we expect to see a continual increase in the use of our patented CTS [cellulose to sugar] technology due to our capability to overcome challenges including cost and feedstock material. With CTS, price for production is lowered to under $1 per gallon and bioethanol producers can use residential and agricultural waste instead of interfering with food supplies or taking up valuable farming lands."

The company said its process lowers the cost of cellulosic ethanol “due to its extremely low construction costs and through its ability to convert any cellulose material including commercial, residential and agricultural waste into sugars.”  It described its patented CTS technology as a dry mechanical process that does not require the use of enzymes, liquid acids, applied heat, pressure or hazardous materials. “The combined use of waste materials and elimination of additional processing materials brings the cost of production to less than $1 per gallon, well below the $3.50 plus cost per gallon of competing cellulosic technologies and significantly lower than traditional corn-based ethanol of $1.35 to $1.65 per gallon, depending on the price of corn,” the news release said.

Information for potential investors is available on the company website. Bio-Products has made an offer to purchase an 8 MMgy ethanol facility in Indian River County, Florida, with the intention of converting it to utilize the CTS process under a sub-license from Alliance BioEnergy. Pending the completion of the plant negotiations and purchase, operations are expected to reach capacity in early 2018, potentially generating $25 million in EBITDA, and then will look to double capacity to 16 MMgy in 2019 and reaching maximum capacity of 34 MMgy in 2021, generating an estimated $112 million EBITDA.