Ethanol plant now one-third complete

At the Port of Morrow in Oregon, US, cellulosic ethanol company ZeaChem's plant is over one-third complete.

The 40,000-gallon fermentation tanks are now in place, while work continues on the two-story operational facility.

Builders started work on the project in November 2010, with completion scheduled for October 2011.

ZeaChem is financing the core technology portion of the project. The company has raised $40 million (€28.7 million) in venture capital and input a further $20 million of its own. The DoE has granted ZeaChem $25 million and $10 million will come from Oregon Business Energy Tax Credits.

When operations begin the demonstration plant is expected to produce 250,000 gallons of ethanol a year and ZeaChem expects that it will handle 10 tonnes of biomass a day.

75 jobs have been created in the construction phase. The facility comprises two floors with operations on the ground floor and a laboratory on the second.

Once the success of the demonstration plant has been proved, ZeaChem hopes to develop a commercial-scale plant that will produce 25 million gallons a year of ethanol. This is planned to be online between Q4 2013 and Q1 2014.