Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/72324
live in a man's world Dr. Randy Cortright Harnessing fuels of the future By Meagan Parrish Corn stalks. Wood chips. Beet sugar. What sounds like a laundry list of agricultural stuff are, to Dr. Randy Cortright, the ingredients that could forever change the way we fuel our cars. As founder and chief technical officer of Virent, a Madison-based chemical com- pany, Cortright is on the cutting edge of an effort to develop a fuel source that eases America's gas-pump woes. While Virent, which opened in 2002 and now employs 120 people, is hard at work advancing technologies to mass produce a biofuel that they say could replace crude oil, the company is also making strides in the not-so-eco-friendly world of plastics, re- cently striking a deal with Coca-Cola to produce bottles made completely from plants. Yet behind the business deals, Cortright is just a guy who loves science. A co-inventor of the biofuel processing technology used at Virent today, he's helping show that with the right innovations, a cleaner future for fuels and other common products isn't so far away. After growing up on a farm in Michigan, you focused on engineering in college. How did you become interested in biomass fuel production? I worked at an oil company for several years in Chicago, focusing on processes that convert oil into gasoline, jet fuel and diesel. I was very interested in that process and wanted to do more research and development … so I decided to come to Madison to get a Ph.D. Here I worked with companies making chemicals out of corn syrup and other things. … Out of that [came] the idea Virent is now based upon: Instead of crude oil, you can take sugar water, put it over this process and make fuels. How far away is Virent from producing a biofuel for mass consumption? We've demonstrated that we could generate about 25 gallons a day of gasoline from beet sugar. We believe we can scale that process up. It's a case now of getting financing and getting comfortable with the technology so we can build a larger plant. We think it's going to be four to six years before people would be able to pull up to a pump and have our product in their cars. What will these new fuels mean for consumers? For the first couple millions of gallons, it will be a little more ex- pensive. But we believe that as we get into the next set of plants, increase the volume and see what the price of biomass is going to be, we'll be able to produce it for less than crude oil. Also, from a greenhouse gas point of view, it is cleaner. Using biomass fuels … we could have reductions in the amount of carbon we release at greater than 80 percent. Quick Questions with Dr. Cortright Subaru Outback What kind of car do you drive to work? Favorite part of coming to work every day? I walk in the lab and see how things went the night before. Every day we learn something new. 26 BRAVA Magazine June 2012 One of the biomass products you've been working with is beet sugar. Because it can be used for food, is this method controversial? Yes. It is something we're concerned with because we have to feed the population first, even though we need more fuel. Then again, we probably don't need to eat more sugar. You might be doing us a favor. [laughs] It's really phenomenal what the American farmer can do. Like any business, they want to make the most that they can. Right now that's corn. But if you look at depreciated farms and ask, 'What's the right thing to use the land for?' we see that we can harvest biomass products and really enable a good cash flow. Does Virent's deal with Coca-Cola indicate that the plastics industry is also leaning toward biomass products? Yes. I think it could become a standard around the world. One of the things we're conscious of is whether companies want to be 'green' as a PR type of thing. But Coca-Cola is serious about it and wants to put the infrastructure in place for biomass-derived products. As companies see that we're working with Coca-Cola to make these bottles they're coming us to see if they can become a customer, too. ••• What is the wildest invention you've ever thought of? I can't tell you. [laughs] Nice try! Not even a hint? OK. There are places with just sun, water and carbon dioxide. People are already working on how to grow things there, but I've got my own twist on it. What's next for you after Virent? Move to rural Wisconsin, get a farm, some cows and make cheese. Photo by Amber Arnold