Coskata and GM: A Partnership Comes Full Circle
On Friday, April 25, 2008, Coskata announced that its new pilot plant would be located at the Westinghouse Plasma Center in Madison, Pennsylvania, the current site of a pilot-plant gasifier.
Interestingly enough, GM, Coskata’s partner, has former ties to Westinghouse that date back a quarter of a century.
Back In 1983, the GM Central Foundry Division collaborated in part with the Westinghouse Electric Corp., now known as the Westinghouse Plasma Corporation (WPC), to develop a high-volume plasma torch furnace. This new torch furnace was called a plasma arc cupola, and it could more flexibly produce molten iron used to make automotive engine blocks, crankshafts and brake components.
GM’s first application of plasma torch technology was in 1989 at its foundry in Defiance, Ohio.
Guess what? It’s being used today to help Coskata’s gasification process.
Gasification is the first step in Coskata’s process to make ethanol out of practically any renewable source. Plasma torches will be used to super heat source material, such as agricultural and municipal solid waste, to 1,600 degrees Fahrenheit, which creates a synthesis gas comprised of carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide and hydrogen. The gas is cooled to about 100 degrees Fahrenheit and then is consumed by Coskata’s patented microorganisms, which excrete ethanol and some water.
Coskata will use a Marc-3 plasma torch at its Madison facility - Japan has used this same style torch for more than five years to gasify municipal solid waste. Larger Marc-11 plasma torches will be used at Coskata’s future commercial scale plants. The Marc-11s have been proven in metallurgical and waste-to-energy commercial applications all over the world.
Over the course of 25 years, GM’s partnership with Westinghouse has grown from the simple desire to streamline an iron process to the hope that it can help meet future energy needs.
It would have been impossible for anyone to have predicted that these torches would help make ethanol, but this process could substantially change the biofuel landscape in the foreseeable future.
Learn more about Coskata’s process in this video
Video Courtesy of General Motors Corporation
Click here to listen to Bill Roe, CEO of Coskata, talk about alternative fuel solutions
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