Lake County, Indiana is working on a deal to supply garbage to two garbage-to-ethanol plants to be built in their county creating 250 jobs and countless more in construction jobs. These plants will reduce the garbage stream by 90%, all but eliminating the need for garbage dumps. Chicago has signaled they are interested in railing their garbage to these plants. See this article

 http://www.nwitimes.com/articles/2008/03/21//news/lake_county/doc1a0efe9ecdc9fbe086257413000d5e12.txt

 This is good news for those of us who believe garbage is too valuable to bury into mountains.   Private investors are putting up $100,000,000 of their own money.

 

Illinois also has a garbage to ethanol company  in Warrenville, Illinois, Coskata, Inc., a partner of General Motors.  Their plan is to build garbage-to-ethanol plants globally so garbage doesn't have to be trucked long distance.  Their process will produce ethanol for $1.00 per gallon. Warrenville, Illinois is near Aurora.  www.coskata.com     See article below.

 

Once again Mayor Green , County Board Chairman Karl Kruse and Economic Alliance head Mike Van Mill have failed to think out of the box as other communities are doing.  They welcome proposals for garbage dumps in the watershed of the river which would employ a few dump people  while nearby communities welcome 21 century technology to deal with garbage that is good for the environment and will employ hundreds of  people and countless construction workers.

 

The good thing is, if Fred Barbara and Tom Volini do come back with a third application to the City of Kankakee for their garbage dump, they will have a harder time proving need.  Illinois law requires 9 criteria to be proven and one of them is need.  How can dump operators prove the need for more garbage dump space  if garbage-to-ethanol plants are being built within a 40 mile radius of Kankakee County which reduce the garbage stream by 90%  and our country has a huge need for energy sources to replace imported oil?

 

January, 2008       Warrenville, Illinois

General Motors announced a partnership with biology-based renewable energy firm Coskata Inc.  www.coskata.com.

The Next Generation of Ethanol - Efficient, Affordable and Flexible

 

Coskata is a biology-based renewable energy company. Our technology enables the low-cost production of ethanol from a wide variety of input material including biomass, municipal solid waste and other carbonaceous material. Using proprietary microorganisms and patented bioreactor designs, we will produce ethanol for under US$1.00 per gallon.

Founded by leading renewable energy investors and entrepreneurs, we have compiled a strong IP portfolio of patents, trade secrets and know-how and assembled a first-class team for the development and commercialization of our compelling syngas-to-ethanol process technology.

 

The goal of Coskata is to play a major role in creating economic fuels from renewable resources, thus minimizing the dependency of countries around the world on petroleum derived fuels.

 

Coskata is commercializing a proprietary process and related technologies for the conversion of a wide variety of input materials into ethanol. Coskata has an efficient, affordable, and flexible three-step conversion process:

1. Incoming material converted to synthesis gas (gasification)
2. Fermentation of synthesis gas into ethanol (bio-fermentation)
3. Separation and recovery of ethanol (separations)

Ethanol can be manufactured using this cutting edge technology at a variable cost of under $1.00 per gallon - the lowest cost of manufacture in the industry and using less than a gallon of water per gallon of ethanol.  Per Argonne National Lab's well-to-pump studies, the resulting ethanol contains 7.7 times the energy consumed in its production.

During gasification, carbon-based input materials are converted into syngas using well-established gasification technologies. After the chemical bonds are broken using gasification, Coskata's proprietary microorganisms convert the resulting syngas into ethanol by consuming the carbon monoxide (CO) and hydrogen (H2) in the gas stream. Once the gas-to-liquid conversion process has occurred, the resulting ethanol is recovered from the solution using "pervaporation technology."

 

Coskata's proprietary microorganisms eliminate the need for costly enzymatic pretreatments, and the bio-fermentation occurs at low pressures and temperatures, reducing operational costs. In addition, the Coskata process has the potential to yield over 100 gallons of ethanol per ton of dry carbonaceous input material, reducing both operational and capital costs. Coskata's exclusively licensed separation technology dramatically improves the separations and recovery component of ethanol production, reducing the required energy by as much as 50%.