Red Herring reports that startup Earthanol of Newport Beach, CA has raised $7.1 million in venture funding to make ethanol from waste. Unlike typical ethanol producers, Earthanol is trying to utilize a cheese industry waste called whey permeate, an acidic by-product that is generally considered environmentally harmful. Earthanol will also try to utilize forestry biomass and municipal waste containing high energy content.
The $7.1 million is being earmarked for development work. The company will decide within two years whether to build an ethanol manufacturing facility.
The Alarm:Clock adds: The Company sees its total market opportunity as approximately ten whey permeate projects totaling 100M gallons of ethanol per year.
The more feedstocks that are developed, the more ethanol we can make. Whey will not produce much volume, but since whey is normally disposed of it makes an excellent feedstock requiring no land use to produce the feedstock.
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