LS9 completes Florida-based advanced biofuels demonstration plant

In California, LS9 announced that its demonstration plant project in Okeechobee, Florida is mechanically complete, and that the company will host a Grand Opening ceremony and press conference on Tuesday, June 12, 2012 at the facility. The event will include the first tours of the facility, and U.S. Congressman Tom Rooney (R-Fla.) will be among the speakers for the event.

The facility will allow LS9 to perform the next critical steps in scaling up and progressing its unique technology into commercial production. The retrofit was completed in early May, with demonstration production of renewable fuels and chemicals to begin early Q3 2012.

The facility will initially be used to enhance LS9’s production capability and generate large commercial samples for testing and
product qualification by key partners and prospective customers, as well as  to test and optimize new process conditions. The Company envisions the plant to be a long-term demonstration facility for all current and future products, with biodiesel being the first product at the facility. LS9 is also pursuing options to enable commissioning of the site to a larger commercial scale.

The project, which involved a retrofit of an old fermentation project on site, was assisted by a $4.5 million investment from the Florida
Opportunity Fund’s Clean Energy Investment Program. The Clean Energy Investment Program was created to promote the adoption of EE/RE products and technologies in Florida; funding for the Program was provided by the U.S. Department of Energy through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) and is administered by the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services’ Office of Energy.