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DuPont forms ethanol venture
16th May, 2008
DuPont Danisco Cellulosic Ethanol will focus initially on making fuel from the leaves and stalks of corn and from sugarcane bagasse
The companies plan to invest $140 million (€90.4 million) in the venture over the next three years and hope to have a commercial-scale demonstration facility operating by 2012. The joint venture will enable the production of an alternative fuel that costs less to manufacture than conventional ethanol and will not drive up food prices, DuPont says.
The venture, to be called DuPont Danisco Cellulosic Ethanol, will focus initially on making fuel from the leaves and stalks of corn and from sugarcane bagasse, the remnants of sugarcane stalks after they are crushed for juice. The company plans to eventually explore fuel derived from wheat straw, as well as a variety of energy crops and other biomass sources.
Cellulosic ethanol is not yet commercially available, but executives with the two companies said that sharing DuPont's pretreatment and fermentation technologies with Danisco's innovative enzymes, which break down cellulosic materials in plants, will put the new joint venture at the forefront of cellulosic production.
'We think this combination puts the two leaders in their fields together,' DuPont CEO Charles O. Holliday Jr. says. 'Ethanol is a commodity when it's out there. The secret is the lowest cost. We're both actually convinced we will have the lowest costs on a very aggressive timeframe.'
DuPont Danisco expects its first pilot plant to be operational in the US in 2009. The joint venture plans to license its technology directly to ethanol producers.
