Photo by Jenn_Jenn. Licensed under Creative Commons license 2.0.

According to this tiny news posting, the cellulosic ethanol biotech team over at Coskata has raised $19.5 million in Series B funding (series B funds are made in the second round of investment in a private company). Whether that money includes the undisclosed amount GM put into the company earlier this year is unclear. I went hunting for the original regulatory filing where Private Equity HUB claims they found the information, but couldn't track it down. Coskata has not yet released an official statement about the funding, but PE says that backers named in the filing include Globespan Capital Partners, General Motors, Khosla Ventures, GreatPoint Ventures and Advanced Technology Ventures. The new name in the Coskata-backing lineup is Globespan.

[Source: Private Equity HUB]

Khosla Ventures and BIOeCON have announced they have formed a new joint venture, KiOR Inc., for "further development and commercialization of the [Biomass Catalytic Cracking Process] technology as well as prepare for raising significantly more capital in the next two to three years." BIOeCON has the knowledge and Vinod Khosla's organization has the cash.

The BCC processes a wide variety of plant matter (technically lignocellulosic biomass) into a bio-oil, which then needs to be further refined to use as a transportation fuel. Paul O'Connor, founder and president of BIOeCON, says in the press release (after the jump), that, "The key technical problem in the conversion of cellulosic biomass into usable fuels is how to open up the inaccessible solid fibrous 'woody' material, so that it can be effectively transformed. Most of the existing processes to unlock the woody structures are quite costly and intensive of energy or chemicals. BIOeCON has developed a simple non-energy intensive way to make the woody biomass accessible to catalysts and convert to a bio-oil product with significantly improved product properties compared to other thermal-chemical processes."

The video above is an old talk by Mr. Vinod Khosla on ethanol. It's not related to this story, I just included it because it's more fun that a corporate logo.

Related:

• New method to obtain cheap natural gas from coal
• Vinod Khosla writes about imprudent environmentalism and "Scheer nonsense"

[Source: BIOeCON]