Verenium Jennings Pilot Facility, America's first Cellulosic Plant

Verenium operates a pilot cellulosic ethanol facility located on a 140-acre company-owned site located in Jennings, Louisiana. Opened in 1999, the facility was capable of CF hemicellulose fermentations. During 2006 the company completed extensive upgrades on the pilot facility, enabling it to conduct combined C5 and C6 fermentations. The Jennings pilot facility is capable of processing approximately two tons of biomass per day into ethanol. It is operated as an R&D facility to improve the company’s process technology and to validate the company’s process on a wide variety of biomass feedstocks.


Verenium Jennings Demonstration Facility
Louisiana, United States

In February 2007, Verenium broke ground on a 1.4 million gallon per year (MGY) demonstration facility located adjacent to its pilot facility in Jennings, Louisiana. The first demonstration-scale cellulosic ethanol facility to break ground in the United States, it is designated to operate on diverse regional feedstocks including sugarcane bagasse and specially-bred energy cane. The facility is slated for completion by the end of calendar year 2007, and for first operations in early 2008. Its purpose is to reduce scale-up risk and provide validation of cost models for Verenium’s first generation of commercial-scale cellulosic ethanol facilities, which are slated for completion by 2010.

There is a lot going on with Verenium today. They also have a plant that is now open in Japan.

Verenium's Cellulosic plant