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Cellulosic ethanol company Qteros Inc. plans to have its new research and development facility in Chicopee operational by the end of the year, company CEO John McCarthy said in an interview today.
The Marlborough-based company plans to open a new 15,000-square-foot building that will allow for larger-scale fermentation than in Marlborough, McCarthy said. The company had originally outlined plans for the project in October. He said he did not have a dollar figure for the cost of the project, but said it’s “not anywhere near the dollars bantered around about for many pilot plant facilities.”
The facility, on the border between Chicopee and Westover Air Reserve Base, will help the company to gather more data in its effort toward commercializing its cellulosic ethanol production process, McCarthy said. The process is based on the Q Microbe, a naturally-occurring anaerobic microorganism developed in part by Women to Watch honoree Susan Leschine, a UMass-Amherst professor who co-founded Qteros in 2006.
The Q Microbe has worked with materials including wheat straw, sugar cane, switchgrass and corn cobs, according to the company. Qteros received a patent for the process in March, and the company intends to license the technology to cellulosic ethanol producers.
The new facility in Chicopee may also serve organizations other than Qteros, McCarthy said, though he said no final decisions have been reached.
Qteros has 50 employees currently, a figure that has doubled in the past year-and-a-half, McCarthy said. The company plans to add staff gradually in coming years. Qteros has received about $30 million in investment in recent years and plans to raise additional capital over the next 6 to 12 months, McCarthy said.
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