The federal NextGen Biofuels Fund has sent Ottawa enzyme maker Iogen’s funding application for a commercial-scale cellulosic ethanol pilot plant in Saskatchewan to the “due diligence” phase.
The decision brings Iogen’s proposal “one step closer to making our country’s first full-scale cellulosic ethanol fuel facility a reality,” federal Environment Minister John Baird said in a news release Friday.
The $500 million NextGen fund, launched in September last year by Sustainable Development Technology Canada (SDTC), is meant to support up to 40 per cent of eligible project costs for “first-of-kind” large demonstration-scale facilities to produce next-generation renewable fuels.
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“After this process, SDTC will make a final decision on funding,” the government said in its release.
Such “next-generation” fuel projects could include Iogen’s proposal for an ethanol biorefinery to be built in Saskatchewan. Iogen already runs a demonstration-scale plant at its Ottawa facility, where it’s developing a process using “specialized” enzymes to convert plant fibre into sugars that are then fermented and distilled to make ethanol. The company already makes enzymes for the pulp, paper, textile and animal feed industries.
While the Ottawa demo plant uses wheat straw, Iogen said other plant cellulose sources such as oat and barley straw, switchgrass, corn stover, elephant grass and hard wood chips have also been researched.
Where the Ottawa plant’s production capacity is about three million litres of cellulose ethanol per year, a commercial-scale facility “may” produce about 75 million litres annually, using about 750 tonnes of feedstock per day, the company says on its web site.
The federal government is already a significant investor in Iogen, whose list of investors also includes the Royal Dutch/Shell Group, Petro-Canada and Goldman Sachs. The government in early 2007 put a repayable $7.7 million investment into Iogen for upgrades to its Ottawa demo plant.
