Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Wood Chip Fuel Conversion Advance





Here we appear to have another step forward in the challenge to break up wood waste, or any plant waste into useable feedstocks.  This step releases some of the sugars while the balance must take more time.  The important lignums get burned here but other processes also convert them into useful by products.

We have far to go but this appears on the way for some level of commercial application in the near term.

We totally need a protocol that economically converts wood waste in particular into viable feed stocks.  It is the largest bottle neck in our agro energy cycle.

Woodlots presently produce around fifteen tons per acre of wood waste each year provided it is been well managed.  If this waste had immediate cash value through farm based reprocessing, then the whole problem of proper forest management completely disappears.

A woodlot needs to be groomed annually with a chipper and a handy power saw.  Those chips are compact and transportable.  At present they have slight cash value.  Creating that value eliminates the funding problem.

All of a sudden forest management stops been a long term proposition.  It turns into a long term wealth building proposition.  It takes no genius to plant high value tress on obvious inferior lands and to sustain them from the annual production of waste wood.  Way more important, the maturing forest in a few years is easily evaluated and then easily sold for full economic value because the inherent cash flow blocks discounting.

I usually steer away from investment suggestions, but I suggest that it is timely to acquire woodlots at present market value. Sometime soon, and likely that means inside the next decade, the market for chips will become valid.  In the meantime one can invest additional cash in properly grooming such acquired woodlots and simply stockpile the wood chips for now.

A Way to Make Motor Fuel Out of Wood

SEPTEMBER 27, 2011


NY Times - A Georgia company says it has overcome a major roadblock in turning agricultural waste into vehicle fuel and other useful chemicals by experimenting with a technology that treats the waste with compressed water heated to very high temperatures.

The goal is to accomplish something that has eluded a dozen companies in recent years despite big government inducements: to commercialize a technology for making use of cellulosic biomass, or wood chips, switchgrass and the nonedible parts of crops. 


Renmatix, the leading producer of cellulosic sugars, today unveiled the PlantroseTM process, the company’s commercial approach to producing sugars more cheaply than ever before. Access to non food derived low-cost industrial sugars, the foundation of the emerging bioindustrial economy, will trigger a dramatic shift from petroleum-based fuels and chemicals to cost-effective biobased alternatives. 

At Renmatix’s demonstration facility in Kennesaw, Georgia, the company has already scaled its process to convert three dry tons of woody biomass to sugars daily.

PlantroseTM and Supercritical Hydrolysis


Renmatix’s PlantroseTM process is the first to break down cellulose at industrial scale through supercritical hydrolysis, which utilizes water at elevated temperatures and pressures to quickly solubilize cellulose. The supercritical state of matter has long been utilized in industrial processes including coffee decaffeination and pharmaceutical applications.

Before the arrival of the Plantrose process, supercritical water had never successfully yielded sugar from biomass at significant scale. The process breaks down a wide range of non-food biomass in seconds, uses no significant consumables and produces much of its own process energy. Current methods of breaking down biomass require expensive enzymes or harsh chemicals, and can take up to three days to yield sugars. With its water-based approach, Renmatix is able to provide cellulosic sugar affordably and on large-scale.

“Sugar has game-changing potential for the bio-based fuels and chemicals market,” said John Doerr, a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Renmatix board member. “The Renmatix breakthrough enables access to affordable non-food based sugar on an industrial scale.”


Doerr, who earned his reputation with early investments in Amazon, Google, Sun Microsystems and other tech giants, led today’s discussion on the role of sugar in scaling bio-based fuels and chemicals. The panel comprised a broad representation of bioindustry leaders: Paul Bryan, head of the Department of Energy’s Biomass Program; John Melo, CEO of Amyris, a synthetic biology company working to reduce the cost of lower carbon, second generation, biofuels and chemicals; and DuPont’s industrial biosciences strategy leader, Vik Prabhu. An intimate group of bioindustry peers joined Renmatix, Governor Tom Corbett and local Pennsylvania partners for the roundtable discussion and technology reveal.


“In the twentieth century, petroleum was the basis for making materials, chemicals and fuels. In the twenty-first century, sugar is replacing petroleum as the raw material for those industries,” said Mike Hamilton, CEO of Renmatix. “Renmatix will provide those sugars faster and cheaper than anyone else, and our move to the Greater Philadelphia area will enables us to attract the talented material science and engineering talent we’ll need to scale rapidly.”

A Way to Make Motor Fuel Out of Wood? Add Water



A Georgia company says it has overcome a major roadblock in turning agricultural waste into vehicle fuel and other useful chemicals by experimenting with a technology that treats the waste with compressed water heated to very high temperatures.

Technology from Renmatix obtained this sugar solution from wood pulp by applying very hot water at high pressure.

The company, Renmatix, plans to cut the ribbon on a research and development center on Tuesday in King of Prussia, Pa., near the heart of the nation’s chemical and refining industry, to complete development of the process. The goal is to accomplish something that has eluded a dozen companies in recent years despite big government inducements: to commercialize a technology for making use of cellulosic biomass, or wood chips, switchgrass and the nonedible parts of crops.

If it works, the technology could reduce the nation’s reliance on oil imports for gasoline in favor of a cleaner-burning and less expensive source of energy. A company with a workable technology would have a guaranteed market, given that Congress has set quotas for the consumption of cellulosic fuel but so far, hardly any is being produced.

What is more, the supply of cellulosic biomass is far larger than the amount of corn available for making ethanol, and it does not involve diverting many resources from food production.

Cellulose is made up mostly of sugars that can be fed to microorganisms to make ethanol or be chemically processed into other fuels or chemical feedstocks. Yet those sugars are locked up in a form that makes them mostly useless to anything but grazing cows and termites.

The process developed by Renmatix involves putting hardwoods into a small pressurized chamber. One class of sugars, the type with five carbon atoms, is broken off and harvested. The remaining material is pumped into a second pressurized vessel for a longer period to release the remaining sugars.

A solid component of woody biomass called lignin remains and is burned to provide energy for the process.

In both phases, the cellulosic material is treated by water at a pressure and temperature that is so high that the water is neither steam nor an ordinary liquid but in a form known as “supercritical.”

Competitors use various combinations of steam, acid and enzymes to convert the woody waste into fuel. But the enzymes are far more expensive than water, and the acid residue must be removed from the resulting product. Some companies have tried to blast the cellulose into very small molecules and then recombine them as alcohols or other chemicals, but they have had trouble controlling the mix that results.

Renmatix uses only pressurized water. When the water is in the so-called supercritical phase, the company says, its pH level can be adjusted to turn it into an acid. When it is depressurized, it reverts to pure water with a neutral pH level.

Renmatix began its lab-scale process in late 2008. A year later, it began operating a pilot-scale plant in Kennesaw, Ga., that processes three tons a day of mixed wood chips.
“We use no significant consumables, like enzymes or acids,” said Fred Moesler, a company engineer who is in charge of scaling up the process.

But scaling up and reaching competitive prices have tripped up several competitors in the field.

“It’s not unimaginable that it would work,” said Thomas L. Richard, a professor of agricultural and biological engineering at Penn State University and the director of its Institutes for Energy and the Environment. Yet he cautioned, “I’m quite confident that they will face some challenges moving from a lab success to a tens-of-millions-of-gallons commercial refinery.”

Renmatix’s process stops at the point that the wood waste is transformed into useful sugars. Other companies would convert the sugars into feedstock chemicals or motor fuels.



Kleiner Perkins’ John Doerr, Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett, and Amyris CEO John Melo laud company’s novel use of super critical water


KING OF PRUSSIA, Pennsylvania – September 27, 2011 – Renmatix, the leading producer of cellulosic sugars, today unveiled the PlantroseTM process, the company’s commercial approach to producing sugars more cheaply than ever before. Access to non food derived low-cost industrial sugars, the foundation of the emerging bioindustrial economy, will trigger a dramatic shift from petroleum-based fuels and chemicals to cost-effective biobased alternatives.

At Renmatix’s demonstration facility in Kennesaw, Georgia, the company has already scaled its process to convert three dry tons of woody biomass to sugars daily. To further support the company’s growth plans, Renmatix is commencing technical and business operations in King of Prussia, located in Pennsylvania’s burgeoning hub of innovation.

The unveiling of Renmatix’s PlantroseTM process was framed by today’s roundtable of industry leaders, moderated by legendary investor John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB). Roundtable participants discussed the growing importance of industrial sugars across the global economy and how Renmatix’s technology is posed to disrupt the industry status quo.

PlantroseTM and Supercritical Hydrolysis

Renmatix’s PlantroseTM process is the first to break down cellulose at industrial scale through supercritical hydrolysis, which utilizes water at elevated temperatures and pressures to quickly solubilize cellulose. The supercritical state of matter has long been utilized in industrial processes including coffee decaffeination and pharmaceutical applications.

Before the arrival of the Plantrose process, supercritical water had never successfully yielded sugar from biomass at significant scale. The process breaks down a wide range of non-food biomass in seconds, uses no significant consumables and produces much of its own process energy. Current methods of breaking down biomass require expensive enzymes or harsh chemicals, and can take up to three days to yield sugars. With its water-based approach, Renmatix is able to provide cellulosic sugar affordably and on large-scale.

“Sugar has game-changing potential for the bio-based fuels and chemicals market,” said John Doerr, a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Renmatix board member. “The Renmatix breakthrough enables access to affordable non-food based sugar on an industrial scale.”

Doerr, who earned his reputation with early investments in Amazon, Google, Sun Microsystems and other tech giants, led today’s discussion on the role of sugar in scaling bio-based fuels and chemicals. The panel comprised a broad representation of bioindustry leaders: Paul Bryan, head of the Department of Energy’s Biomass Program; John Melo, CEO of Amyris, a synthetic biology company working to reduce the cost of lower carbon, second generation, biofuels and chemicals; and DuPont’s industrial biosciences strategy leader, Vik Prabhu. An intimate group of bioindustry peers joined Renmatix, Governor Tom Corbett and local Pennsylvania partners for the roundtable discussion and technology reveal.

“In the twentieth century, petroleum was the basis for making materials, chemicals and fuels. In the twenty-first century, sugar is replacing petroleum as the raw material for those industries,” said Mike Hamilton, CEO of Renmatix. “Renmatix will provide those sugars faster and cheaper than anyone else, and our move to the Greater Philadelphia area will enables us to attract the talented material science and engineering talent we’ll need to scale rapidly.”

“Renmatix is placing its headquarters here in King of Prussia because of the talent that exists in this part of Pennsylvania.  My administration is helping them to accomplish this through careful investment and enthusiastic assistance,” said Corbett. “In Pennsylvania we are encouraging innovation at all levels and are poised to grow new jobs as companies like Renmatix come here, stay here and succeed here.”

About Renmatix

Renmatix is the leading producer of cellulosic sugars for the global renewable chemical and fuels markets. The company’s proprietary Plantrose™ process challenges conventional sugar economics by cheaply converting biomass – from woody biomass to agricultural residue – into useful, cost-effective sugars. Renmatix’s supercritical hydrolysis technology deconstructs non-food biomass an order of magnitude faster than other processes and enhances its cost advantage by using no significant consumables. Backed by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Renmatix is privately held, with operations in Georgia currently capable of converting three dry tons of cellulosic biomass to sugar per day. For more information, please visit www.renmatix.com.

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