US' Qteros, India's Praj ink deal on low-cost ethanol production

http://www.platts.com/RSSFeedDetailedNews/RSSFeed/Petrochemicals/7854967

US-based Qteros and India's Praj Industries have inked a strategic partnership to accelerate global efforts for industrial-scale cellulosic ethanol production, Qteros said in a statement on Wednesday.

The agreement leverages on Qteros' software capabilities, in particular, its Q Microbe -- a proprietary microorganism that turns non-food based feedstocks into fermentable sugars -- with Praj's hardware capabilities. The latter has built more than half of India's 400 ethanol plants.

The companies will collaborate on a highly focused, multi-year development program with the objective of rapidly developing and commercializing Process Design Packages (PDPs) that enable low-cost cellulosic ethanol production, or the conversion of biomass to ethanol. They plan to retrofit Praj's existing pilot plant in Pune, India with Qteros' technology platform, which will become the foundation for accelerated production scaling as part of commercialization efforts.

Initially, the companies will focus on developing PDPs for feedstocks that include sugarcane, corn and wheat residuals with the goal of achieving commercial-readiness by the end of 2012 and focus on Praj's existing broad base of ethanol customers seeking to add co-located cellulosic ethanol facilities to their existing ethanol infrastructure. Based on the achievement of certain development and commercialization milestones, Qteros and Praj may broaden the partnership to incorporate additional feedstocks, and potentially other biochemical products to be derived from Qteros' microorganism-based platform.
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