The renewable joint venture between SynGest, Unitel Technologies and Louisiana State University Agricultural Center has conducted the preliminary engineering studies to estimate the capital and operating costs for commercial scale production of bio-butanol.
Optinol interim CEO Jack Oswald said that the company has adopted an alternative production process for butanol compared to companies like Gevo, Cobalt and Butamax.
"In lieu of genetic modification of the organism or other hosts such as yeast or E.coli, the Optinol process uses a patented non-GMO clostridium strain that naturally and prolifically favors the production of butanol, and without acetone or ethanol," Oswald added.
The tests were conducted on a range of feedstocks including sugar cane juice, corn starch, sweet sorghum juice, molasses types including sugar cane and beets and cellulosic sugars.
Optinol CTO Ravi Randhava noted, "The Optinol process centers on continuous flow through fermentation of our organism in inexpensive immobilized cell columns.
"Low cost fermentation combined with low cost continuous extraction and low energy distillation processes provide the basis for a low cost commercially robust production platform," Randhava said.
