Mead, Neb.-based E3 Biofuels LLC is scheduled to hit the auction block on Dec. 11, according to Ethanol Producer Magazine, and will be sold on an "as-is" basis.

E3 filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in late 2007 and began seeking investors after the plant struggled to get off the ground because of mechanical problems.

According to the company’s bankruptcy filing, E3 listed $10 million in assets and $73 million in unfunded liabilities.

Mike Juniper, director of CRG Partners, the Chapter 11 Trustee in the case, said that because of the plant's unique closed-loop design that it may draw in potential buyers.

Juniper said the interest received so far has come from people who own or operate ethanol plants.

"I think it’d be a shame that somebody would come along later and think about building a plant [with a similar closed-loop concept] and think 'well, it never worked in Mead'," Juniper told EPM. "There are still some bugs to work out, but the design does make a lot of sense."

(Ethanol Producer Magazine, Nov. 18, 2009)
(http://www.ethanolproducer.com/…)

DTN: The story of E3 Biofuels may be one of the bigger heartbreaks of the recent ethanol explosion and subsequent implosion. In this day and age of tight profit margins the E3 plant provided some hope that ethanol could be produced without using expensive fossil fuels such as natural gas. The E3 plant was designed to produce energy by combining manure collected from an adjacent 30,000-head cattle feedlot, with thin stillage, a cellulosic byproduct of ethanol production. The hot liquid mixture is decomposed inside an anaerobic digester, where bacteria extract methane-rich biogas that is used to fire the plant's ethanol boilers. The plant was also touted as environmentally friendly, and was believed to be the first closed-loop system in the world. (Todd Neeley)