By Greentech Lead America: Primus Green Energy, a
developer of a proprietary process to produce gasoline and other fuels from
biomass and/or natural gas, has secured $12 million investment in a third round
of funding led by IC Green Energy, the renewable energy arm of Israel Corp.
Ltd.
The $12 million investment will help the firm to complete
the integrated single-loop demonstration plant currently under construction in
the US. This latest investment brings the total of funds raised since 2007
to $40 million.
Primus is looking forward to partnering with additional
strategic investors to bring its biomass/natural gas-to-gasoline process to
market.
“IC Green Energy’s financial commitment these past
five years has allowed us to proceed toward commercialization in a deliberate,
focused manner, secure in the knowledge we are backed by an investor that will
also stand behind us over the long-term,” said Dr. Yom-Tov Samia, chairman
of the Hillsborough, NJ-based firm.
Primus already has a pilot test plant in operation at its
Hillsborough complex, and the company currently working with Bechtel
Hydrocarbon Technology Solutions to initiate its first commercial plant in
early 2013.
Primus Green Energy’s proprietary technology is a
combination of industry-proven methodologies and processes that have produced
fuels and chemicals at a commercial scale.
Primus’s technology has significant competitive
advantages. The process has a conversion efficiency of 25 percent and the
company expects to achieve a conversion efficiency of 33 percent, meaning that
it can produce gasoline more economically.
Gasoline produced at the company’s test facility has been
independently validated by two third-party industry testing laboratories to be
93-octane and with physical and chemical properties adhering to specifications
of gasoline.
The front end consists of biomass gasification or
converting natural gas to syngas and the back end, its “STG Plus”
(syngas-to-green) gasoline process, a proprietary version of an established
fuel synthesis technology.
Primus recently produced its first sample of
renewable drop-in gasoline through a proprietary combination of biomass conversion
technologies that transforms herbaceous and woody biomass, in conjunction with
natural gas, into high-octane gasoline.