Eco-ethanol - 2nd generation Ethanol fuel from Fruit waste

Since 2004, we have been developing the technologies for establishing production of ethanol from organic waste for the global market. in July 2006 the Board of CIP made a decision to establish an operation in Costa Rica, since this country is well positioned in relation to the US market, and it has a considerable amount of fruit production.

From the start, we have been working in collaboration with various Universities and Research Centers in Europe, and we established a firm collaboration with a Danish Engineering firm and a Danish University, both with many years experience in process technologies and biofuels.

Our strategy has always been to develop a technology for the use of waste organic materials for the production of ethanol rather than from cash crops. We have developed a series of units that due to their compact design can be installed next to existing fruit processing factories, thus avoiding transport of waste, which in most cases has a high water content.

The first part of our Business model for our technology was to solve the direct environmental problem that the fruit waste constitutes; this we have solved with our process. The second part was to ensure the waste products from our process are either recyclable or have minimal environmental impact. What we have achieved, surpassed our expectations, our waste is clean water and an organic solid that can be used as a fertilizer, cattle feed or it can be burnt in our boilers to produce a steam surplus, which can also be used to produce electricity. This not only reduces the cost from the use of bunker fuel oil, we also drastically reduce the toxic fumes that burning bunker oil produces. We take an environmental waste problem and turn it into ethanol, clean water and a recyclable organic solid, a very tidy environmental solution.

Our pilot plant started running in July 2009 and after a series of test at different processors locations we will build the first commercial size plant capable of producing 2 million liters of ethanol from 45,000 tons of fruit waste per annum during 2010.