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.
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