A brief video clip was watched by the conference attendees and a panel discussion was held on the NewPage and the Flambaeu River Bio-refineries and Progress at TRI Pilot Facility. The panel discussion covered the implementation of the Fisher Tropsch process and was moderated by BDC’s Ben Thorp:

• Dave Newport – TRI.
• Bob Byrne – Flambeau River Bio-refinery.
• Doug Freeman – NewPage Corp.

A field site visit was made by the attendees of a pre-commercial large scale pilot system built by Coskata utilizing Westinghouse Plasma Jet technology to breakdown woodchips (or other organic materials) producing ethanol. In Coskata’s process the resulting “syngas” produced by the plasma jet heat was cooled and directed to a bioreactor where a proprietary strain of micro-organisms converted the “syngas” to ethanol and then the ethanol was distilled to meet fuel use standards.

A presentation and tour of Coskata’s synfuel to ethanol small scale commercial process at the Westinghouse plasma technology center was the highlight of a very interesting meeting that included 12 other presentations from ranging from policy at the DOE, overview of investors perceptions of the industry, academic studies of various technologies currently available or under development, and commercial installations of state of the art conversion of cellulosic substrates to useful energy rich biochemicals and bioenergy.