A startup based in Tel Aviv, Israel, called HCL-Cleantech has reinvented a century-old process called the Bergius process as a much cheaper method to produce ethanol from biomass. The process uses concentrated hydrochloric acid (HCL) to breakdown biomass into sugars but has been too expensive for commercial use. The company, however, says that it has developed a way to recycle 42 percent of the HCL, pumping it back into the system and significantly reducing the cost of making ethanol.
"The only really innovative aspect of what we do is the recovery of the acid, which costs 10 percent of what it used to cost," says CEO Eran Baniel. But that tweak attracted interest from a number of companies in the United States, and recently HCL-Cleantech received $5.5 million in venture capital from clean-energy investors Khosla Ventures and Burrill and Company to build a pilot plant in the United States.
One way or another, the sand is running out for oil ticks---and all their pensioners in the West |