Butamax Advanced Biofuels, a developer of biobutanol technology, has reported the joining of four new members to the Butamax Early Adopters Group.
The four new ethanol facilities include Platinum Ethanol, a Fagen-owned facility in Arthur, Iowa; Siouxland Ethanol in Jackson, Nebraska; Granite Falls Energy in Granite Falls, Minnesota; and Little Sioux Corn Processors in Marcus, Iowa. This joining indicates the new members’ interest in the production of biobutanol.
The Early Adopters Group (EAG), formed in December 2011 with Highwater Ethanol in Lamberton, Minnesota as the founding member, is a consortium of major ethanol manufacturers showing interest to produce biobutanol as a long-term, sustainable biofuel. The addition of four new members to the consortium brings the tally to seven plants with a total annual ethanol production capacity of roughly half a billion gallons.
The four new ethanol facilities and the earlier announced EAG members are all Fagen/ICM-designed facilities built by Fagen, a major biofuels engineering, procurement and construction contractor. Recently, Butamax and Fagen announced a partnership to retrofit ethanol plants for biobutanol production.
Butamax is the pioneering company that identifies the potential and basic technology to produce isobutanol using advanced biotechnology at a lower cost. Biobutanol is a high-performance drop-in biofuel, which is mixable at high concentrations using existing infrastructure and its renewable energy content is double that of current biofuel blends.
The Chief Executive Officer at Butamax, Paul Beckwith stated that high-quality ethanol manufacturers have shown great interest to produce biobutanol as an advanced biofuel. With the EAG members’ extensive industry expertise, the consortium is equipped to rapidly expand the production of biobutanol for the transportation sector.