Unexpected products emerge in the hunt for biofuels (San Francisco)

While the road to commercializing next-generation biofuels is long, almost limitless off-ramps present themselves along the way. Companies are using fuel technologies to create other, cheaper-to-make products like renewable chemicals, food and vitamins.

ZeaChem Inc., which does its research and development in Menlo Park, will first use its hybrid biochemical and thermochemical process to create acetic acid and then ethyl acetate from any feedstock, including wood, switch grass and corn stover, at the demonstration facility it’s building in Boardman, Ore. Ethyl acetate is a solvent used in nail polish remover and glues, among other things. It can fetch $6 per gallon, much more than fuels, which sell for $2 to $3 a gallon.

Jim Imbler, CEO of ZeaChem, said by being able to produce glacial acetic acid in one step, then ethyl acetate in the next, he’s producing saleable chemicals sold by multiple vendors while taking some of the risk out of proving he can produce ethanol.

“The whole game about commercialization is disaggregating the risk components,” said Imbler. “We look at every component of risk and say, ‘How am I going to minimize that?’”

While getting fuels to a price to compete with fossil fuels requires facilities to produce hundreds of millions of gallons of fuels, acetic acid and ethyl acetate can reach price parity in smaller quantities.

Algae fuels company Solazyme, in South San Francisco, has divisions focused on food made from algae oil and has a joint agreement with Procter & Gamble to develop personal care products like soap and lotions.

And San Carlos-based LiveFuels, which may be the most unusual of the lot, said it can sell the same fish to restaurants that it’s raising to eat algae and produce oil that can be converted into fuel. It also plans to explore selling fish oil.

Read the full story in the San Francisco Business Times.