India’s Praj Industries Limited has signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to become a Gevo licensee for producing renewable isobutanol at sugar-based ethanol plants.

Under the MOU, Praj will undertake to license up to 250 million gallons of isobutanol capacity for sugar-based ethanol plants over the next 10 years.

Gevo will market the isobutanol produced by Praj’s sub-licensees. Praj will also contribute process engineering and equipment services to expand isobutanol capacity at Gevo’s plant in Luverne, Minn., U.S.A., as well as to improve yields and optimize energy consumption at the facility.

Praj is a global leader in the ethanol and brewery industries, in addition to the industrial wastewater treatment, pharma, biotech and cosmetic sectors. It has blue-chip customers across five continents and 60 countries. Praj has core expertise and experience in process and integration engineering, as well as equipment and system manufacturing, with a strong focus on sustainable development with the help of in-house state-of-the-art R & D facilities. It is listed on the Bombay and National Stock Exchanges of India.

“Isobutanol has a substantial market opportunity given that isobutanol is a high performance biofuel that can solve many of the issues of 1^st generation biofuels,” said Pramod Chaudhari, executive chairman of Praj. “It also enables a true biorefinery model wherein a number of specialty chemicals and bio-products can be produced using isobutanol as a feedstock. We look forward to creating a new opportunity for 1^st generation sugar-based ethanol plant owners, as well as accelerating the use of 2^nd generation cellulosic feedstocks to produce isobutanol.”

“This new strategic alliance demonstrates the flexibility of Gevo’s GIFT® technology to convert a wide range of sugar sources into isobutanol. It also continues to validate the interest in licensing our intellectual property portfolio as we look to transition our business to focus more on a licensing model,” said Gevo CEO Patrick Gruber.