Comet Biorefining: 50 Hottest Companies in Bioenergy candidate profile

Comet Biorefining
Based in: Ontario, Canada
2008-09 ranking: Unranked

Business: Comet Biorefining has developed a transformative technology to produce cellulosic sugar from biomass for the production of biofuels and bioproducts. Comet’s cellulosic sugar can be used to produce any biologically derived fuel, including ethanol, butanol, synthetic hydrocarbons, algal fuels.  Comet was founded by Dr. Andrew Richard, former CTO of Mascoma.

Model: License cellulosic sugar production technology; royalty-based payments

Past milestones:

1. Proof of concept at lab/pilot scale
2. Patents filed
3. Co-location site for demonstration facility identified

Future milestones:

1. Financing
2. Construct/optimize demonstration facility in 2010 and design commercial system
3. Establish downstream partnerships and licensees

Metrics: By moving the pretreatment process out of the biomass processing plant and closer to the original biomass, the cost of cellulosic sugars can be reduced, in bench level tests by the company, to as low as 7 cents per pound.

Comet quotable quotes:

“The production of “low cost sugars is the biggest and most important problem in cellulosic ethanol.”

“With the Comet model, processing facilities would no longer be limited in scale by the size of the local biomass resources, and could be increased to a size based on the optimal amount of biofuel needed to supply a given demand in the market.”

The Hot 50 for 2009-10 will be released Tuesday, 12/1. Between now and then, you’ll see profiles of potential candidates in the Digest, and you’ll have a chance to vote for your favorites. Reader response will count for 50 percent of a company’s overall score in the preparation of the rankings. The remaining 50 percent is voted by a panel of experts.

Information on registering your company for the “50 Hottest Companies in Bioenergy” rankings is here. While registration is not required, completing the candidate profile allows companies to augment information provided to the panel of selectors – registration form materials are also used to create candidate profiles that are published daily in Biofuels Digest.

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