Gevo Biofuels

Gevo is a biotechnology company based in Englewood, Colorado. It deals primarily with biofuel technology, development and processing.

Since 2005, the company has worked to utilize new, more environmentally sound alternatives for the production of biofuels. Gevo is developing an innovative technology to convert sugars derived from biomass into higher alcohols and hydrocarbons. Most importantly, this includes biobutanol.

Gevo has plans to start marketing these products, currently in the development phase, in 2011. In doing so, they have comprised a team of veterans of bioprocessing and the commercialization of bio-based systems.

Gevo's research is based on three critical pieces of technology that it developed to efficiently and cost-effectively produce advanced biofuels on a large scale. One is protein wngineering of biocatalysts. To create advanced biofuels like butanol, Gevo's research scientists have developed a proprietary process to convert agricultural waste products into different types of renewable, alcohol-based, liquid fuels. The second is metabolic engineering of suitable host organisms.

The firm is engineering suitable host organisms that utilize carbon and energy efficiently for fuel production. These strains exhibit the increased yield and productivity sufficient to produce commodity chemicals and fuels on a large scale. The third is process engineering: the firm has developed a proprietary process technology to enhance productivity and lower product separation costs. Gevo's process models predict that the economical production of butanol and other fuels is comparable in cost to current ethanol production.