AgSugar inventor Lewis is eccentric, charming and not all he claims

CEDAR RAPIDS - At the heart of AgSugar International's plans and dreams has been Ted Lewis, a former dentist from Sikeston, Mo., who has been working for some years to produce ethanol from biomass like cornstalks.

He's not alone. Much of the ethanol industry is looking to do just that. Two Iowa plants - Poet's in Emmetsburg and Dupont's in Nevada - are slated to come online in 2013, turning crop waste into ethanol.

By phone last week, Lewis acknowledged that he no longer has a relationship with investor Steve Lavorerio of the ChemPro Group in New Jersey, which created a prototype of his inventions, or AgSugar International of Cedar Rapids, which had planned until late last year to produce his biotech machines.

Still, Lewis said his ideas have merit and his research will continue.

Problems with the story

The people involved with him and his inventions call him “Dr. Lewis.” They assume he holds a scientifically relevant doctorate in addition to his dentistry degree. He doesn't, he said.

In October 2009, Lewis' company, Mo-Fuel Inc., signed an agreement with Lavorerio's company to commercialize a patented biotechnology process that efficiently and inexpensively would turn cellulosic material into ethanol.

An announcement at the time referred to a study by the U.S. Department of Energy, though Lewis says now that the patent was held by a Montana inventor and the DOE study was related to that inventor's work.

In May 2010, Lewis was featured in a short Internet video with a version of his mobile cellulosic conversion module built by Lavorerio. The video shows him in the Global Fuels biodiesel plant in Dexter, Mo., with plant owner Jerry Bagby, both of whom were touting the promise of Lewis' machine.

“I got the international patents on it and clients on three different continents getting ready to put these into full production all over the world,” Lewis said in the video.

Patents are pending, he said now, and Walter “Skip” Emig, CEO of AgSugar International in Cedar Rapids, and some of his associates have the international contacts.

Connections to Iowa

Sometime after that video, Lewis ended up in Keokuk, where John Rothgeb, a principal shareholder in Keokuk Ethanol Co., was working to adapt Lewis' machine to a biomass process. By then, Emig and his associate, Dan Kazanas, both of St. Louis, were involved with Lewis.

In March 2011, Lewis, Bagby and two others formed a corporation in Missouri called AgSugar Inc.

In the months after that, Emig and Kazanas migrated to Cedar Rapids and started another company, AgSugar International.

Lewis said he agreed to license his work to the Cedar Rapids enterprise for sale abroad, with the idea that AgSugar would maintain the domestic market.

The players

Emig became the CEO of AgSugar International and Kazanas, the chief operating officer. They now hold those titles in their new Cedar Rapids company, Vertecra Inc.

The others in the Cedar Rapids company's leadership are Glenn Richards, a chemical engineer from Bakersfield, Calif.; and David Snyder, Leslie Baych and Don Ross, all of Cedar Rapids. All are listed as owners of AgSugar International in the company's application for state assistance.

Snyder and Baych worked at the former Midland Forge in Cedar Rapids, Snyder as engineering manager and Baych in quality assurance, and both are involved in other local, small-business ventures, including Cryogenic Engineering Inc.

Cryogenic leases space from Ross in one of several small commercial/industrial buildings he owns at Wenig Road NE and J Avenue NE. That's where Ross is building a facility for AgSugar International and its offshoot, Vertecra.

In interviews with the Cedar Rapids group, Rothgeb, Lavorerio, Lewis and others, it appears all are in the dark about some aspects of the competing players, about the status of Lewis and about the status of Lewis' inventions. Some still believe Lewis is on to something and that the money and/or time they invested - or persuaded others to invest - may yet bring a return.

Lavorerio in New Jersey, for instance, still believes that the portable unit he built for Lewis might find a market in Third World countries, where it can be driven into fields to convert crop waste or other biomass on site into much needed fuel.

In Cedar Rapids, Snyder seems most receptive to the idea that Lewis might yet have something to revolutionize the ethanol industry. Snyder said that assessment is informed, in part, by Gary Clapp, an adjunct professor of chemistry and president/CEO of the Institute for Industrial and Applied Life Sciences at Missouri Western State University in St. Joseph, Mo.

Clapp, whose role is to encourage scientists, inventors and entrepreneurs, knows Lewis well and has been an ardent supporter. Still, Clapp acknowledges that he doesn't know where the cellulosic liquid comes from that Lewis occasionally sends to him to test.

Although he knows of no published research results, Clapp said what Lewis' invention purports to do should be provable.

The plan unravels

AgSugar International's Emig, Snyder and Richards came to a different conclusion in September. One of the machines, the fermentation drive module, failed to produce the desired results during tests at the Diamond V research laboratory in Cedar Rapids, they said.

“Again and again, it didn't help. It made it worse,” said Richards, chief technology officer at AgSugar International's successor company, Vertecra.

Lewis said Diamond V's process was so exceptional that the machine couldn't help it.

In mid-September, AgSugar International turned its attention to the second machine, the cellulosic conversion module.

The machine was to feature a secret adaptation, a “quantum” box with a magnetic wave to improve the breakdown of cellulosic material. The quantum's promise was to vastly improve what otherwise was an adaptation of old technology called acid hydrolysis.

The company was working on a computer process-flow diagram so it could determine how much it would cost to build the machines. When the time came to add the quantum box to the computer model, Richards said, Lewis said there was no such quantum box.

Snyder said they waited until so late in the game, because it seemed to make sense that Lewis would reveal the secret only after the basic mechanics of the machine were close to being worked out.

“So the hairs go up on the back of your neck,” Snyder said. “Now you've lost trust, and you understand what's going on fairly quickly.”

“And if there's mistrust,” added Emig, “if it's not provable … you can't risk any more.”

Lewis disputes the AgSugar International version of events that led to the end of their relationship.

“I think they misunderstood. … We worked on it for like three days, and they said, ‘We're done,' ” said Lewis, who still talked only about concepts when asked about the box.

Emig said Lewis' machine, without the secret attachment, is little different from what Hitler used in World War II to convert wood chips into alcohol to fuel German tanks.

Charismatic salesman

Still, Emig said he can see why he believed in Lewis and why others did and still do. Lewis is a charismatic man with a seemingly deep understanding of chemistry and physics, he said.

“So he's showing all these experiments, and wow, they are pretty cool, and they work to the point where the bubbles come up and this happens and this happens, and you believe,” Emig said. “The world is full of brilliant people, and this one individual comes up with one cool wavelength that he says makes something happen that nobody else has seen.”

Emig compares Lewis to the affable, eccentric scientist in the “Back to the Future” movies who invented the flux capacitor that sent Michael J. Fox's character traveling through time.

“He's just like that,” said Emig.

Lewis chuckles at the comparison.

“I don't expect I'll ever give it up,” Lewis said of his quest to revolutionize renewable fuels.

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