Irvine-based renewable fuels maker BlueFire Renewables Inc. has launched a subsidiary called SucreSource LLC to produce cellulosic sugars for commercial use and to supply other biofuels companies.
BlueFire converts non-food resources—such as urban trash, wood waste and other agricultural residues—into ethanol.
BlueFire and other ethanol makers use sugar in the production process.
“A lot of companies have technology that can make biofuels from sugars,” said Arnold Klann, chief executive of BlueFire. “But [they] don’t have the sugar source other than food- or grain-based sugars. There’s no front-end technology.”
BlueFire plans to serve that part of the market with SucreSource and technology licensed from Irvine-based inorganic chemicals manufacturer Arkenol Inc., a predecessor company.
“We get the throwaway sugar molecules from waste materials and utilize them more efficiently,” Klann said.
Construction on two plants is under way for SucreSource—one at BlueFire’s Fulton, Miss., facility and another in Lancaster in northern Los Angeles County.
The company got an $88 million grant under the federal government’s economic stimulus program to build the plant in Mississippi, according to Klann.
“We anticipate the plant will be completed at the end of 2013,” he said.
Klann also said BlueFire recently capped a deal with China Huadian Engineering Co. Ltd.—one of China’s largest utilities—to finance a power and biorefinery facility in Fulton along with up to five additional plants in the U.S.
Sugar production is now done in BlueFire’s pilot plant in Anaheim, according to Klann.
Demand for cellulosic sugars come from companies such as San Francisco-based renewable oil and bioproducts company Solazyme Inc.
“We have supplied sugars to them in the past,” Klann said. “Companies like that have a need. We’ve been dealing with five different companies that are…producing biofuels from sugars that are interested in building their business at commercial scale.”
BlueFire has seven full-time employees at its corporate headquarters in Irvine. It saw net income of about $264,000 in the first half of the year and had about $1.6 million in assets at mid-year.
“We see SucreSource as a logical extension of the business that we have focused on,” Klann said. “This is an additional profit source within BlueFire.”
