Edeniq’s Cellunator enables plants to mill corn and other plant materials into small, uniform pieces of feedstock that can be converted into sugars needed to produce biofuels.

Edeniq is installing Cellunators at the first of four Flint Hills plants. Edeniq’s OilPlus corn oil extraction process is also being deployed at one Flint Hills plant and plans call for two others. OilPlus combines mechanical and chemical treatments to improve corn oil recovery.

Flint Hills Resources Renewables expects further adoption of Edeniq equipment to provide bolt-on technologies needed to extract sugar from a wide range of cellulosic (non-food) feedstocks to create cellulosic ethanol. Flint Hills will also conduct commercial testing and scale-up of Edeniq’s Pathway platform. Pathway utilizes mechanical and enzymatic improvements to break down cellulosic materials, already part of the corn ethanol process, to further increase yield and produce cellulosic ethanol in existing infrastructure.

Edeniq owns and operates a demonstration-scale production facility in Visalia, California to convert cellulosic feedstock into low-cost cellulosic sugars and cellulosic ethanol.

Edeniq recently announced the company has raised over $30 million in additional funding. The equity investment was led by existing investors, as well as new investor Flint Hills Resources Renewables, LLC. In association with the equity investment, Jeremy Bezdek has joined the board of directors of Edeniq.

We’ve been working side by side with Flint Hills Resources Renewables’ operators and the innovation team to ensure our solutions can be fully leveraged to increase the value and production capacity of their current 440 million gallons-per-year yield. This collaboration with Flint Hills Resources Renewables demonstrates our mission of accelerating low-cost cellulosic ethanol to market.

—Brian Thome, president and CEO of Edeniq

Flint Hills Resources, LLC, through its subsidiaries, is a leading refining and chemicals company. Its subsidiaries market products such as gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, ethanol, biodiesel, olefins, polymers and intermediate chemicals, as well as base oils and asphalt. Flint Hills Resources operates ethanol plants in Fairbank, Iowa Falls, Menlo and Shell Rock, Iowa. The plants have a combined annual capacity of 440 million gallons of ethanol.

Flint Hills Resources, a leading producer of transportation fuels in the Upper Midwest, is the largest purchaser of ethanol in Minnesota, where it has utilized ethanol and other biofuels in its fuel distribution system since the mid-’90s. The company also has made equity investments in bioenergy companies, and operates a biodiesel plant near Fort Worth.