Crysalis Biosciences to Convert Ethanol to Sustainable Aviation Fuel
Crysalis BioSciences, based in Columbus, GA, has restarted the former Central Ethanol plant in Sauget, IL. The company plans to ramp up production to 54 million gallons of ethanol per year and convert that ethanol into 31.1 million gallons of sustainable aviation fuel. Photos courtesy of Crysalis BioSciences.
Crysalis BioSciences Inc. has restarted a shuttered ethanol plant in Sauget, IL and is ramping up its annual production to 54 million gallons of ethanol with plans to convert the ethanol into 31.1 million gallons of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) by 2027.
Based in Columbus, GA, Crysalis BioSciences purchased the former Center Ethanol plant in February 2023 for $8 million in back taxes from St. Clair County, according to Peter Wright, an environmental lawyer based in Washington, D.C., who is vice president of compliance and external engagement for Crysalis.
Its investment in the project totals $200 million, the company has said.
In September, it was announced that Crysalis had reached a Reimagining Energy and Vehicles in Illinois (REV Illinois) agreement with the state’s Department of Commerce and Economic Development. The REV Illinois program offers potential tax credits to support the development of the Sauget site as a renewable energy manufacturing facility. The tax credits that Crysalis is eligible for through the REV Illinois agreement will be related to the number of new, full-time employees whose work is directly related to REV-eligible activity, Wright told Processing Journal.
The company’s construction of the SAF plant also is eligible for REV Investment Tax Credits. The tax credits can be issued for up to 10 consecutive years and could be worth as much as $6 million over several years beginning in 2025, he noted.
“The amount of credits that Crysalis may receive will ultimately be based on what the actual cost is to build the plant, and the number of new employees hired and how those costs compare with the eligibility requirements,” Wright explained. “It is a fairly complicated agreement.”
Recent Renovations
Since purchasing the site, Crysalis completed the essential renovations needed by the plant in the first quarter of 2024, equipping it with what the company called a “state-of-the-art technology for future productions.” The plant hopes to reach its full ethanol production of 54 million gallons of ethanol a year by the end of 2024 or in early 2025. Several former Center Ethanol employees have been rehired, and several new employees were hired and trained to operate the plant. “A key piece of being able to restart the plant was the receipt of an air permit from the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency the spring of 2024,” Wright stated.
The plant will need 19.3 million bushels of corn a year to produce 54 million gallons of ethanol that can be processed into 31.1 million gallons of SAF.
After evaluating all the major technology providers for converting ethanol into SAF, Wright said Crysalis has signed a licensing agreement and an announcement is forthcoming. During the selection process for a SAF technology provider, he added, Crysalis thoroughly evaluated the energy efficiency and the output of SAF that the different technologies can produce.
Plant History
The former Center Ethanol plant is located on a 57-acre site across the Mississippi River from the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, MO. Construction from a Delta-T design was completed in 2008 and the plant ceased operations in 2019. At the time of its construction, the plant cost $101 million to build and included “innovative construction for receiving, grain storage, grinding, processing and fermentation while also requiring electrical, maintenance and office construction,” according to the website of MC Industrial, a wholly owned subsidiary of McCarthy Holdings, Inc. There were 18 field-erected tanks, including four 763,000-gallon fermentation tanks, a 1-million-gallon “beer” well and four distillation tanks.
Crysalis chose to purchase the plant for its first biorefinery for several reasons, Wright noted, including its proximity to the large St. Louis metropolitan area, which offers an abundance of food waste that can be converted into natural gas and, eventually, used to help power the ethanol plant. In addition, the site offers excellent connections to major highways, rail, barge service on the Mississippi River, nearby transportation fuel terminals, and a major interstate fuel pipeline connected to several airports.
Crysalis plans to produce its SAF featuring a carbon intensity (CI) score that is 90% lower than that of traditional petroleum-derived jet fuel. “The company is looking at many ways to lower the carbon intensity of the ethanol that it produces,” Wright remarked. “An initial focus is on the installation of carbon dioxide capture equipment that will facilitate potential sales of carbon dioxide as well as carbon sequestration.” Second, the company is also looking to install an anaerobic digester that will produce renewable natural gas from waste products to replace some of the petroleum-based natural gas the company purchases.
The ethanol-to-SAF plant also will produce bio-acetonitrile (Bio-CAN), Wright said, using innovative technology developed at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. The technology will produce the world’s first 100% bio-based acetonitrile with a reduced CI that is similar to the 90% lower CI achieved by its SAF production process. “It is anticipated that 3% to 4% of the ethanol it produces will be used to produce five kilo tons per year (kTa) of oligonucleotide grade Bio-ACN, with the balance going into the manufacture of SAF,” Wright said. “Bio-ACN will be a drop-in replacement for conventional acetonitrile that is produced from fossil fuel [...] Bio-ACN does not have some of the low concentration of toxic chemicals like hydrogen cyanide (HCN).”
Acetonitrile is used in the production of acrylic fibers, synthetic rubber, and plastics, in addition to industrial and pharmaceutical uses as well as lithium-ion battery manufacturing. Wright said ACN production was severely disrupted in 2008, when the Chinese government shutdown its manufacturing sector to improve air quality for the Beijing Olympics.
Financing Available
In August, Crysalis announced the successful closure of an investment by Airbus, which marked what the company called “a significant step forward in the company’s mission to manufacture zero carbon biochemicals creating green chemical manufacturing infrastructure in the United States.” The investment came from Burnham Sterling Asset Management LLC (BSAM) through its Sustainable Aviation Fuel Financing Alliance Fund (SAFFA Fund I, LP), with Airbus as SAFFA’s anchor investor. Airbus designs and manufactures airplanes and aerospace products and is based in the Netherlands.
Crysalis is finalizing a master offtake agreement with the airline, aircraft manufacturers, and aircraft owners who are investors in the SAFFA fund, Wright said. “Crysalis is also engaging in discussions with other potential purchasers of SAF,” he added. “Because the terms are being negotiated, we cannot provide any details of these arrangements.”
Nitto Denko, a Japanese company headquartered in Osaka, was the first major corporate investor in Crysalis. Nitto Denko was founded in 1918 and is a very large global organization engaged in many different businesses, Wright said. “Nitto is very interested in our development of Bio-ACN as it opens a pathway for the company to significantly lower its carbon intensity in the manufacture of pharmaceuticals that use large quantities of acetonitrile,” he noted. Nitto Dekko USA is the principal U.S. subsidiary of Nitto Denko. Nitto’s life science business is Nitto Avecia (avecia.com).
Jerry Perkins, contributing editor
Crysalis BioSciences’ Principals
Co-founders of Crysalis BioSciences are Sanket Gandhi, the company’s CEO, and Eric Karp, its chief technology officer. The original company was incorporated in March 2022, and the name of the company was changed to Crysalis Biosciences, Inc. on Jan. 30, 2023.
Gandhi holds a master’s degree in chemical engineering from the Stevens Institute of Technology, Hoboken, NJ, and has more than two decades of experience in the biopharmaceutical, biopolymer, oil, gas, and mining industries.
After receiving his graduate degree, Gandhi worked as a process engineer developing pharmaceuticals and went on to develop an inhalable insulin delivery platform for diabetics. In 2011, he founded a company to create unique and sustainable biopolymers that could replace existing chemical approaches used in the pharmaceutical, oil, gas, and mining industries.
After eight years in the oil and gas and industries, he divested the original business into two new businesses: Integrity BioChemicals to focus on oil and gas and industrial markets and Fermworx to focus on nutraceuticals, cosmetics, and more highly regulated markets.
Eric Karp has had more than a decade of experience in biofuels, natural products, catalysis, and end-to-end bioprocess development in both government-run national laboratories and in industry. He has authored more than 36 peer-reviewed publications and is the inventor of multiple patents currently being used in biomanufacturing.
He has won numerous awards, notably an R&D 100 award in 2017, the Federal Laboratory Consortium for Technology Transfer award in 2017, was appointed a distinguished member of the research staff at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in 2021 and won the University of Washington’s Early Career Impact Award for chemical engineers in 2023.
The two co-founders met when Gandhi attended a presentation Karp gave at the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2021 on methods to make renewable carbon fiber. Karp was, at the time, a distinguished member of the research staff at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, CO.
Sanket was impressed with Karp’s presentation and his understanding of the commercial potential of his inventions. That led to conversations and then meetings between the two men about the opportunity to create a company to commercialize renewable, bio-based low-carbon chemicals.
Source: Crysalis BioSciences