Praj Ind-Gevo Inc agreement enters commercialisation phase

Leader in the sugar-based ethanol plants, Praj Industries today said its joint development agreement with chemical products company Gevo Inc has entered into a commercialisation phase.
Praj and Gevo Inc have jointly announced that Gevo's proprietary isobutanol technology will now be available for licensing to processors of sugar cane juice and molasses. This follows on the back of Praj's development work, adapting Gevo's technology to sugar cane and molasses feed stocks, a company statement said here.
Praj and Gevo entered into a joint development agreement and a development license agreement in November 2015.
Gevo is a leading renewable technology, chemical products, and next generation biofuels company.

The goal of these agreements was to adapt Gevo's isobutanol technology to use non-corn based sugars and lignocellulose feed stocks. The process technology development was performed at Matrix, Praj's R&D center located in Pune.
Licensing is expected to be focused on Praj plants located in India, South America and South East Asia, with initial capacity targeted to come on-line in FY 2019-20 time frame, it said.

"We are excited to offer this technology to our global customers who stand to benefit from an additional revenue stream from isobutanol. This isobutanol platform can be offered as 'bolt-on' to an existing ethanol plant or as a greenfield plant," Praj Ind executive chairman Pramod Chaudhari said.

"We are pleased with the work that Praj has done in adapting our technology using cane juice and molasses as feedstocks. Praj is a great partner who shares our vision of low carbon fuels made from sugars in high yields," Gevo chief executive officer Patrick Gruber said.
Gevo is expected to be the primary off-taker, marketer and initial distributor for isobutanol produced from the plants built by Praj using isobutanol technology.
In the next phase of commercialisation, Praj is working to adapt Gevo's technology to Praj's second generation bio-refineries enabling the production of isobutanol from lignocellulosic biomass, the release said.