Comstock Acquires Plain Sight Innovations Corporation Comstock Mining Inc.
VIRGINIA CITY, Nev., Sept. 09, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Comstock Mining Inc. (NYSE: LODE) (“Comstock” and the “Company”) today announced its acquisition of 100% of the issued and outstanding equity of Plain Sight Innovations Corporation (“PSI”) in exchange for 8,500,000 restricted shares of its common stock, and all of the intellectual property assets of PSI’s affiliate, FLUX Photon Corporation (“FPC”), in exchange for a performance-based cash payment equal to 20% of the Company’s future consolidated net cash flow from operations up to $18,000,000.
PSI’s management team has deep experience in a diverse array of industries, including renewable fuels, hazardous waste, agriproducts, and other commodities with almost thirty years of clean technology research, development, and commercialization expertise, with an emphasis on the extraction and valorization of natural resources.
PSI owns an array of patented, patent-pending and proprietary process technologies that were designed to convert low cost, ubiquitous woody biomass feedstocks into cellulosic ethanol, while producing a portfolio of co-products, including renewable diesel and an extraordinary new form of biomass-derived crystalline graphite, or biographite, with compelling applications in the production of carbon neutral batteries and other electrification components. PSI also operates a commercial pilot cellulosic fuel facility based on its technologies in Wisconsin, where it has already proven the ability to efficiently convert various forms of woody biomass into cellulosic ethanol and co-product precursors for renewable diesel, biographite, bioplastics, and a portfolio of carbon neutral alternatives to fossil fuels.
The Path to Decarbonization is in Plain Sight
The transportation sector is expected to dramatically increase the production of electric vehicles to more than 30% of all auto sales by 2030. However, more than two thirds of the energy required to power those electric vehicles is expected to come from burning fossil fuels, and the direct combustion of liquid fuels will most certainly continue to be the dominant source of power for transportation for decades. Burning less, burning smarter, and reusing emissions are therefore critical objectives as the world moves to clean energy and decarbonization.
“Renewable fuels provide a critical pathway for decarbonization, however, most current forms of renewable fuel draw from the same pool of conventional feedstocks, including corn and various vegetable oils in the U.S., and the entire universe of those feedstocks only represents a tiny fraction of the domestic burn,” said David Winsness, PSI’s founder and Chief Executive Officer. “Unfortunately, the lifecycle carbon benefits of growing, harvesting, and using conventional feedstocks are extremely limited. Our technologies were designed to address that dilemma by converting abundantly available forestry wastes, short rotation energy crops, and other low-cost sources of woody biomass into natural liquid fuels with vastly superior benefits for a fraction of the refining costs of conventional renewable fuels.”
The U.S. Department of Energy has estimated that more than one billion tons of forestry wastes and other forms of biomass will be produced annually by 2027 with continued growth thereafter. That’s enough new feedstock to produce as much as 70 billion gallons per year of advanced carbon neutral fuels with PSI’s proven technologies, or more than one third of the U.S. transportation demand on an energy equivalent basis.
Cellulosic Fuels
“That’s enough feedstock to rapidly neutralize motor fuel emissions in conjunction with America’s transition to electrification and renewable energy,” added Winsness. “PSI’s cellulosic fuels facilities will be the first of their kind, with an expected financial, natural, and social impact far in excess of any other platform, renewable or otherwise.”
PSI’s first facility is expected to scale up to an initial capacity exceeding 330,000 tons per year of forestry wastes over its first three years of operations, as it extracts, converts, and refines biomass into ethanol, renewable diesel fuel, and biographite to generate annualized revenues exceeding $86,000,000, $173,000,000, and $346,000,000 per year during the facility’s first three full years of operations, respectively, as shown in the following summary projections:
2023 2024 2025 2026
Throughput (tons per year) 33,000 85,500 165,000 330,000
Revenue ($000s per year) $ 34,626 $ 86,565 $ 173,131 $ 346,262
Comstock’s Executive Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Corrado De Gasperis, commented, “Cellulosic fuel production, like lithium-ion battery recycling and industrial hemp production, is poised for, and we are planning for, exponential growth. Our guidance for these three businesses represents just one facility each and we are planning for over one hundred cellulosic fuel facilities in the U.S. alone. That level of production barely dents the transportation fuels market, yet it represents a meaningful impact on shifting consumption and the resulting decarbonization.”
Ecosystem of Strategic Feedstocks, Processes, and Products
PSI’s technologies are especially important to the Company’s plans to build a synergistic ecosystem of strategic lines of business and production facilities with complimentary feedstocks and products, supported by world class technological and engineering talent. The Company’s ability to systemically discover, develop, engineer, manufacture and commission its own solutions, represents a remarkable competitive advantage that enables speed.
Benchmark Mineral Intelligence estimates that the major automakers have committed over $300 billion to developing electric vehicles (“EVs”) and that over 2,000 GWh of lithium-ion battery (“LIB”) production capacity is in the pipeline. That amount of production in turn equates to 1.4 million tons of new annual graphite demand by 2028. Conventional graphite comes from natural deposits or the carbonization of petroleum products, with market values ranging from about $10,000 per ton for natural graphite to $20,000 per ton for synthetic graphite.
De Gasperis continued, “Most of my relevant experience comes from managing the global manufacturing of carbon-based, material-science products, particularly synthetic graphite. I was literally stunned by PSI’s discovery of a natural source of carbon neutral biographite. When we consider that every cathode in every lithium-ion battery needs an anode, and most anodes are made from synthetic graphite which is substantially all produced with carbon intensive fossil fuel derivatives, then we understand that that industry is not climate smart or clean. We can fundamentally change the game by introducing the world’s first scalable carbon neutral alternative to fossil fuel derived graphite.”
PSI’s intellectual property portfolio also includes remarkably advanced new approaches to carbon capture and utilization, atmospheric water harvesting, waste heat and energy recovery, and industrial photosynthesis for terascale decarbonization and the sustainable production of very large agricultural outputs for fractional inputs.
About Comstock Mining Inc.
Comstock Mining Inc. (NYSE: LODE) (the “Company”) is an emerging innovator and leader in the sustainable extraction, valorization, and production of scarce natural resources, with a focus on high value strategic materials that are essential to meeting the rapidly increasing global demand for clean energy, carbon-neutrality, and natural products. To learn more, please visit www.comstockmining.com
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