As a result, Sundrop can produce 100 to 125 gallons of fuel per ton of dry biomass, about twice what conventional gasification plants are getting. It also needs just a half gallon of water—and its hydrogen molecules—to produce a gallon of fuel, compared to six gallons or more needed by traditional gasification technology, Simmons said.

The high temperatures also mean not producing tar as a waste byproduct, which happens with traditional gasification processes, he said.

The bottom line, according to Simmons, is that Sundrop’s technology can produce fuel that’s cost competitive, with unsubsidized production costs of under $2 per gallon. Meanwhile, oil prices have ranged between $70 and $80 per barrel for the last few months.

“This is a renewable, thermal-chemical sledgehammer; because of the temperatures that we operate at, it’s possible to handle all kinds of feedstocks,” said Alan Weimer, a University of Colorado chemical engineering professor and Sundrop consultant acting as its chief technology officer. Weimer co-founded Boulder-based Copernican Energy Inc., a company pursuing the use of solar-fired reactors, which Sundrop bought in June 2008.

Weimer also is executive director of the Colorado Center for Biorefining and Biofuels. The center is a consortium involving CU, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colorado State University, and the Colorado School of Mines.

The Broomfield tower has its roots in technologies coming out of CU, NREL, and the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Scientists at the three institutions have spent years working on using the sun’s heat to tear apart molecules.

“We’re trailblazing an area,” Weimer said. “It’s very unique and novel, and people don’t think of it in terms of conventional fuel production. What we do is at the interface of a couple of technologies. You have concentrated solar thermal using mirrors and towers to heat water to make steam to drive a turbine to make electricity. And on the other side you have people doing standard biomass conversion.

“We operate at the interface of those two areas.”

Sundrop is focusing on producing gasoline or diesel from its syngas because transportation fuels are a large, existing market that Sundrop’s fuel fits in with, Simmons said.

The fuel is identical to petroleum on a molecular level and can be shipped in existing pipelines, pumped in existing fuel pumps, and burned in existing vehicle engines—no new infrastructure is needed, he said.

Sundrop flipped on the tower’s solar reactor in late September. Simmons figures the company has another 18 months to two years of research work there before the tower no longer is needed.

But the next step is to raise those millions to build Sundrop’s next phase, a demonstration, commercial-scale gasifier and refinery.

Simmons said the plant—a 564-foot tower surrounded by 100 acres of mirrors and linked to a pilot-scale biorefinery—probably would be located in the sunny deserts of Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, or Southern California. The plant should be near a rail line, so trains can haul biomass to the plant, and a pipeline, to ship the fuel to market, he said.

Construction on the demonstration plant is expected to start this year. A full-scale commercial plant, with a tower surrounded by mirrors and an expanded biorefinery, capable of producing 100 million gallons of fuel a year, is planned for completion in 2015.

Colorado will remain home for Sundrop’s headquarters and research work, and the state also could play a role in growing crops destined for the gasifier, Simmons said.