GS AgriFuels Takes Stake in Gasification, GTL and Reforming Company
14 November 2006
GS AgriFuels Corporation has taken a 10% stake in ZeroPoint Clean Tech, Inc. for $2.5 million. ZeroPoint is a development stage company commercializing patent-pending and proprietary biomass gasification, gas-to-liquids, gas processing and fuel reforming, and evaporation technologies.
The syngas output of ZeroPoint’s gasifier can either be used to generate electricity in a standard gas-fired generator or catalyzed into liquid fuels such as ethanol, methanol or synthetic diesel with the Fischer-Tropsch process.
ZeroPoint’s Biomass Gasifier is designed to standardize variable cellulosic and other biomass feedstocks and optimize high yields of high-quality syngas in real-time with greatly increased capital and operating cost efficiencies at much smaller scales as compared to traditional gasification technologies.
Under the terms of GS AgriFuels’ investment agreements with ZeroPoint, GS AgriFuels also received an option to purchase another 4% of ZeroPoint and Thomas Scozzafava, GS AgriFuels’ president and chief operating officer, was appointed to the ZeroPoint board of directors.
To date, the most significant resistance to wide-scale use of biomass gasification has been the requirement to customize gasifiers for the specifics of each individual application. This is because different forms of biomass have different sizes shapes, densities, moisture contents, cellulosic structures and gasification and devolitization characteristics. Customization requirements and the practicality of gasifying variable feeds have typically constrained gasifiers to larger scale, capital intensive designs.
"We believe that the ZeroPoint technology is the most cost effective commercially viable technology available for producing cellulosic ethanol and other biomass derived liquid fuels. ZeroPoint’s gasifier is scalable and very robust—it can readily accommodate variable biomass feedstocks while still achieving its production goals, and we plan to rely on the technology extensively as we develop our agrifuel production facilities."
—Thomas Scozzafava
ZeroPoint has successfully demonstrated the capabilities of its technologies in a small scale pilot processing plant and it is currently building a commercial scale pilot plant based on its technologies at Clarkson University in Potsdam, New York.
Earlier this year, GS AgriFuels’ sister company, GS CleanTech Corporation, entered into an agreement with ZeroPoint for the exclusive rights to distribute ZeroPoint’s technology in the North American corn ethanol production industry. (Earlier post.)
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