In the spring of 2008, Inbicon began partnering with the G-team and focused us on two goals: 1) to market its biomass conversion technology worldwide, wherever there’s both abundant biomass and demand for renewable fuel; 2) to commercialize Inbicon technology in North America.

Its roots go back to the wheat fields of Denmark in the 1980s.  The predecessors to DONG Energy, Inbicon’s parent company, began exploring how to convert leftover straw into a green fuel to replace coal in the country’s power-generation plants.

First, they found a way to burn the straw without scaling the boilers.  Then a way to convert the straw to ethanol—while also producing a clean lignin that burned more efficiently in the power plants than the straw.

After six years of pilot plant testing in Denmark, of improving and optimizing and patenting its proprietary technology, Inbicon was ready to ramp up.  A demonstration model of the Inbicon Biomass Refinery opened November 18, 2009 at Kalundborg port.


The new plant can turn 110 tons of wheat straw per day into 1.5 million gallons a year of The New Ethanol and other renewable energy products. Waste steam from an adjacent power plant cooks the straw in the refinery and begins breaking down the cellulose fibers and releasing the sugar to be fermented into The New Ethanol.  The other renewable fuel (lignin) from the refinery replaces some of the fossil fuel (coal) used by the power plant.  The integrated process dramatically improves the efficiency of both the power plant and the biomass refinery and reduces their overall carbon footprint.  Ergo: win-win.

The refinery is the first stage of the new Inbicon Biomass Technology Campus.  It’s being designed to foster worldwide scientific collaboration in an open environment, a model the G-team is adopting for our dialogue with you.  The tech campus will be Inbicon’s research and development headquarters as well as the client and partner center.

Next: Inbicon is following its Kalundborg demonstration project with one at commercial scale in the United States.  Current plans call for integration with a power station built in the U.S.  The Inbicon Biomass Refinery will convert 1320 tons of wheat straw a day into 20 million gallons of The New Ethanol a year.

Again, the refinery uses waste steam from the power plant, which in turn gets clean lignin from the refinery.  It’s an even bigger win-win, because most U.S. power plants aren’t as efficient to begin with as Danish plants.  So the power station will double its efficiency while slashing operating costs for the refinery.

Groundbreaking is expected in 2010, and The New Ethanol flowing in 2012.
We’ve also been talking to U.S. operators of large corn-ethanol plants about energy integration with a new Inbicon Biomass Refinery.  The configuration is a bit different, but again both plants make big efficiency gains and produce greener energy.

Sugar cane and sorghum people have also been in touch with us.  So have investors and biomass collectors and….

What’s on your mind?