Trade Resources Industry Views Post Offers an Overview of a Patented New Process Being Used by Renmatix

Post Offers an Overview of a Patented New Process Being Used by Renmatix

Tags: Hardwood

This post offers an overview of a patented new process being used by Renmatix to achieve physical transformation of sustainably produced plant cellulose to bio-available sugars (the kind of affordable sugars industrial bugs will thrive on). The process involves no hazardous chemical reactions, no chemical additives, no biological cultures in tubes tanks or ponds, and no use of destructive distillation. Principal inputs are plant cellulose, water, and heat. Renmatix 'sugar chain' products are marketed as building blocks for assembly of a wide variety of chemical products, sustainable fuels, lubricants, and more. Overview of Renmatix manufacturing technology. At the heart of the process is continuously run supercritical water process for hydrolysis of plant cellulose. Hardwood chips in the form of waste wood are what they use now; But, the horizon holds other possibilities. The Renmatix process features a very fast start-up time and - important to Tree Huggers - waste output per unit of production is very low. The product stream includes mixtures of low-cost, non-edible sugars that could be competitive on world markets but which are expected to see rapid demand growth in North America as a raw material for other industrial processes. Controls are highly automated. Water and heat are 'tightly' recycled. Where the heat comes from. Lignin, a direct co-product of the extraction, is physically purified in a side-stream, and continuously burned for energy recovery within the process, keeping fossil needs to a minimum. (Steady state, continuous operation of throughput and thermal conservation are key reasons the process economics are good. ) For some background on lignin, Wikipedia has a nice overview here. To understand it's significance to the Renmatix process, this sentence from the Wiki entry is helpful: It [lignin] is one of the most abundant organic polymers on Earth, exceeded only by cellulose, employing 30% of non-fossil organic carbon[4] and constituting from a quarter to a third of the dry mass of wood. Value-chain implications Renmatix customers typically buy "sugar chains" to feed bio-engineered microorganisms used to make more sophisticated industrial materials. Such synthetic biological manufacturing processes are rapidly being developed as a living replacement for the old-style petrochemical plants and fuel refineries that were full of toxic components and multiple waste streams. You'll sometimes hear synthetic biological manufacturing referred to as 'industrial biotech. ' The more sugar customers buy, the faster biomass and microorganisms can replace traditional oil extraction, refining, and petrochemical production technologies as the dominant material basis for Western consumer culture. Government's role. If this is going to scale up significantly, state and Federal governments have an important role to play. Agencies could, for example, help make biomass producers aware of the market and facilitate distribution. They also could offer investor incentives to help match the scale up of sustainable biomaterial production with industrial biotech demand. Working with the input of both industry partners and conservationists, government can help speed transformation of 'the dirty old' manufacturing paradigm into a green one. Renmatix has pre-commercial production underway and customers are using their products. Detailed discussion follows. Raw Materials USDOE estimates a billion tons of harvestable biomass is produced per year in USA. For more on USDOE programs related to biomass, visit this site. Renmatix plans initially to use primarily waste wood from sawmills or the low-value, "small trees" thinned to prevent the spread of disease or reduce fire load. You may be wondering where the long term feedstock opportunities are concentrated. Here's a USDA-produced forest land cover map which gives a pretty good indication. Source: lbmdaily.com

Source: http://www.lbmdaily.com/news/news_details.cfm?artid=55622&cat=4
Contribute Copyright Policy
Hardwood Could Become the New Sugarcane
Topics: Construction