Oct. 16--Coskata Inc. on Thursday unveiled a $30 million, second-generation ethanol-producing refinery in Madison, Westmoreland County, that is designed to burn old tires, plastics, concrete or solid waste as fuel, rather than strictly corn.

CEO Bill Roe said Warrenville, Ill.-based Coskata will move forward with an initial public stock offering that could happen as soon as the recession eases. The company has already raised about $70 million from private investors.

It will also proceed with construction of its first commercial-size flexible-fuel ethanol refinery. All engineering has been completed, a site in the Southeast has been selected, and an unidentified wood products company is eager to move forward as a partner, Roe said.

"We just want to make sure of our financing for the plant, which will produce about 55 million gallons of ethanol annually," Roe said. "The cost for such a plant will be in the $330 million to $340 million range."

The wood products' partner currently is providing wood chips as fuel to the Madison plant.

Behind Westinghouse Electric Co.'s Waltz Mill facility, Coskata yesterday introduced "Project Lighthouse," an open-air mass of piping and containers that the company and investors, including General Motors Co. and investment group The Blackstone Group, see as re-energizing ethanol production in America.

"Today we are saying that we're open for business," Roe said of the plant his company has been building and testing for more than a year.

The minimum-scale facility, able to produce 40,000 gallons a year, will allow Coskata to design and build the larger commercial plant, using the same but larger components, including a Westinghouse Plasma super-hot torch that converts fuel into synthetic gas. The Coskata process ferments the gas using proprietary micro-organisms that consume carbon monoxide and hydrogen and give off ethanol.

Coskata is confident it can produce fuel-grade ethanol at a price of around $1 a gallon, including all production costs.

Independent tests of Coskata's ethanol by Argonne National Laboratory found the process generates 7.7 times more energy than it uses to produce the fuel.

"We see biofuels as a near-term solution to offset rising vehicle energy demands and to reduce greenhouse gas emissions," said Bob Babik, General Motors' vehicle emissions director, at yesterday's unveiling.

"We want 50 percent of all our models to be E85-capable, 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gasoline, by 2012," Babik said.

Rick Stouffer can be reached via e-mail or at 412-320-7853.

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