July 11, 2011
BY Kris Bevill
EdeniQ Inc., which is developing technology to add cellulosic ethanol production capabilities to existing corn-to-ethanol facilities announced it has reached a deal with IKA Works Inc., the U.S. subsidiary of Germany-based manufacturing firm IKA Werke GmbH Co. KG, to advance EdeniQ’s front-end biomass conversion technology.
The joint development agreement is an extension of work conducted between the two companies since 2009 to produce EdeniQ’s first offering, dubbed the Cellunator. The Cellunator has been in use at Nebraska’s 50 MMgy E Energy Adams LLC plant since 2009 and has also been deployed at other facilities, which will be named soon, according to EdeniQ officials. The company claims that the Cellunators have increased ethanol plant yield by up to 5 percent at their partners’ facilities with minimal maintenance or negative impact on other plant processes.
During the International Fuel Ethanol Workshop & Expo in Indianapolis in late June, Griffin told attendees the company is aggressively pursuing sales of its technology and that EdeniQ’s mission is to transform the ethanol industries in the U.S. and Brazil by migrating first-generation ethanol plants to become cellulosic ethanol producers. The latest agreement between EdeniQ and IKA will focus on producing an enhanced version of the Cellunator known as the Super Cellunator, which will be an improvement on the initial technology but still focused on biomass conversion, said Scott Janssen, chief financial officer at EdeniQ. “We think our process is novel and unique and plan to make ongoing improvements to that,” he added.
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Michael Janssen, renewable energy specialist at IKA, said the development agreement with EdeniQ presents great opportunities for his company. “When it comes to the development of new devices and processes, IKA has always worked closely with its customers,” he said. “We see the global biomass conversion pretreatment market as a huge opportunity, for which IKA and EdeniQ have the solution.”
The Super Cellunator will be deployed at EdeniQ’s two-ton-per-day pilot plant in Visalia, Calif., next year.
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