Chemtex representatives made a presentation on their PRO ESA technology at the Infocast event which took place in Milan from the 8th-10th of February. They discussed the efforts of his company to enable the bio-based chemicals market.
Chemtex is a R&D subsidiary of Italian chemicals giant Gruppo MG. They operate in a number of sectors, one of which being the renewable sector. Their efforts here centre on first generation bioethanol, second generation lignocellulosic ethanol development, bioethylene and biodiesel. Their main aims are for their technology to be competitive with fossil fuel alternatives, to be sustainable and for feedstocks to be easy to grow. One of their key platform technologies to meet these goals is PRO ESA.
The Chemtex’ PRO ESA technology has three stages: Agronomy, Pretreatment and Hydrolysis/Fermentation. Agronomy refers to the process of producing feedstock; the breeding and growing various energy crops. The main concerns here are for the crops to be easy to grow, non-competitive with food and high yields of useful chemicals. They found that the Giant Reed Arundo donax is a useful feedstock that meets these criteria. Pretreatment is the conversion of the biomass produced by feedstock cultivation to building blocks for the synthesis of the final product; generally pretreatment involves breaking down the biomass into its constituent sugars or other substances, but in the case of PRO ESA it is concerned with conversion to sugars alone. Chemtex spent some time scouting technologies for new developments here before attempting to scale it up. This seems to have paid off as the lignocellulosic ethanol technology they use can achieve high yields from a variety of feedstocks. The last step, Hydrolysis/Fermentation can involve either hydrolysis or fermentation, depending on what the desired final product is. After a period of R&D, the company settled on a continuous reactor which had a design focus on efficiency, getting the highest yields for the lowest energy input. Over the past four years the company has been working to take their ideas from the lab and bring them to market. Chemtex constructed a 40,000 ton/year industrial pilot facility and it is seeing its first year of operation. This plant can produce C5 and C6 sugars to convert into ethanol , and can recycle lignin to produce energy to power the plant. The C5 and C6 sugars, along with the lignin can also serve as feedstocks for producing a variety of industrial chemicals sustainably. In terms of raw materials, there is great value in pursuing the technology; while a barrel of oil costs $70, the raw materials needed to produce an equivalent volume of biofuel cost $6.5. Chemtex believe this justifies high R&D costs for the moment, as once commercialized the process for manufacturing these chemicals will be cheaper, cheap enough to realistically out-compete petrochemical products.
Chemtex is a R&D subsidiary of Italian chemicals giant Gruppo MG. They operate in a number of sectors, one of which being the renewable sector. Their efforts here centre on first generation bioethanol, second generation lignocellulosic ethanol development, bioethylene and biodiesel. Their main aims are for their technology to be competitive with fossil fuel alternatives, to be sustainable and for feedstocks to be easy to grow. One of their key platform technologies to meet these goals is PRO ESA.
The Chemtex’ PRO ESA technology has three stages: Agronomy, Pretreatment and Hydrolysis/Fermentation. Agronomy refers to the process of producing feedstock; the breeding and growing various energy crops. The main concerns here are for the crops to be easy to grow, non-competitive with food and high yields of useful chemicals. They found that the Giant Reed Arundo donax is a useful feedstock that meets these criteria. Pretreatment is the conversion of the biomass produced by feedstock cultivation to building blocks for the synthesis of the final product; generally pretreatment involves breaking down the biomass into its constituent sugars or other substances, but in the case of PRO ESA it is concerned with conversion to sugars alone. Chemtex spent some time scouting technologies for new developments here before attempting to scale it up. This seems to have paid off as the lignocellulosic ethanol technology they use can achieve high yields from a variety of feedstocks. The last step, Hydrolysis/Fermentation can involve either hydrolysis or fermentation, depending on what the desired final product is. After a period of R&D, the company settled on a continuous reactor which had a design focus on efficiency, getting the highest yields for the lowest energy input. Over the past four years the company has been working to take their ideas from the lab and bring them to market. Chemtex constructed a 40,000 ton/year industrial pilot facility and it is seeing its first year of operation. This plant can produce C5 and C6 sugars to convert into ethanol , and can recycle lignin to produce energy to power the plant. The C5 and C6 sugars, along with the lignin can also serve as feedstocks for producing a variety of industrial chemicals sustainably. In terms of raw materials, there is great value in pursuing the technology; while a barrel of oil costs $70, the raw materials needed to produce an equivalent volume of biofuel cost $6.5. Chemtex believe this justifies high R&D costs for the moment, as once commercialized the process for manufacturing these chemicals will be cheaper, cheap enough to realistically out-compete petrochemical products.
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