10/08/2007
SunEthanol, Inc. Prepares for Commercialization
Summary
SBIR grant SunEthanol [www.sunethanol.com/site/] has received further support for a novel approach to ethanol production. The new approach follows from the research of Susan Leschine of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She is the Chief Scientist and Founder of SunEthanol. She isolated a microbe which has broad capabilities to hydrolyze plant biomass without preliminary chemical treatments, and moreover, the same microbe processes the sugars into ethanol. This consolidated bio-processing (CBP) capability promises to greatly reduce costs from those of traditional of multistep processing. Major ethanol producer VeraSun Energy has now bought into SunEthanol promising a fast track transition from laboratory demonstration to commercial scaleups. Public reports are at: [website]