GE Energy Financial Services, a unit of GE (NYSE: GE), has joined an $8 million funding round for CoolPlanetBioFuels, a start-up company developing a technology that converts biomass to fuel and carbon that can be sequestered.
The funding was led by North Bridge Venture Partners, which had also led CoolPlanet’s financing round last year. Additional financial details were not disclosed. CoolPlanet’s research and development facilities are located in Camarillo, CA.
CoolPlanetBioFuels is developing a thermal/mechanical processor that directly inputs raw
biomass such as woodchips, crop residues and non-food fuel crops, and
produces distinct gas streams for catalytic upgrading to conventional
hydrocarbon fuel.
The company is also developing one-step
catalytic conversion processes that mate with the processor’s output gas
streams to produce useful products such as eBTX (gasoline), synthetic
diesel and proprietary high-yield fuels. This process also
produces a type of char, which can be used to sequester carbon and act
as a soil conditioner.
“GE’s technical and market resources could accelerate our development well beyond the impact of the company’s financial investment,” said Mike Cheiky, CoolPlanet’s president and chief technology officer.
