Aemetis achieves milestone to secure USDA loan guarantee for its Riverbank cellulosic ethanol plant

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Type of post: NEWS IN BRIEF.

Aemetis has just announced that its cellulosic ethanol demonstration unit has been working for more than 120 days of continuous operations with 94% uptime, meeting the requirements for a federal USDA 9003 Biorefinery Assistance Program guaranteed loan (see press release, 6/3/2018). The facility is located at InEnTec’s Technology Center in Richland (Washington) and was built to showcase cellulosic ethanol and fish meal production through the integration of advanced gasification from InEnTec with patented microbial fermentation from LanzaTech. It covers the fully integrated system, including biomass handling, gasification, gas clean up, fermentation, distillation and waste treatment.

The completion of the successful operation of the demonstration unit is the final technology step in securing a USDA loan guarantee for the 158 M$ plant Aemetis is building in Riverbank (more information here: Aemetis takes a new step to build a cellulosic ethanol biorefinery in California, 23/10/2017). With a 20-year feedstock supply agreement and a 55-year lease already signed, the Riverbank plant is expected to begin operations in 2019. According to this new press release, the phase 1 of the project would have a capacity of 12 million gallons instead of the 10 originally planned. Through plans to further expand the Riverbank plant and the construction of additional facilities, Aemetis intends to be a leader in the Californian advanced biofuels sector.

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