Biomass-Fed Chemical Process Projects, 2017

by Dr. Bernard Cooker (Chemical Processing Solutions/ Lee Enterprises Consulting Inc./Biofuels Digest) This is a review of the biomass-fed chemical process projects producing renewable chemical products which were published in Chemical Engineering Progress (CEP) and Chemical and Engineering News (CEN) from 1/1/17 to 12/18/17. It includes activity in biochemicals, biopolymers and other renewable products.

It is based on a spreadsheet database of the information from CEP and CEN, maintained since 2013. All projects using biomass to manufacture a product and all projects fed an intermediate produced from biomass are included in the database. All projects are included, regardless of scale, from laboratory (< 1 liter), through pilot (1 liter to <500 gallons), to commercial (>500 gallons). The database contains the following information on each project: the published data source, the raw material(s), the product(s), the estimated scale, its production capacity, the entities undertaking the project, the lead entity, its location, any financial data and brief notes on the technology.

The database now contains 622 projects and for this article, all projects from 1/1/17 to 12/18/17 were reviewed. Within this subset, 112 projects convert biomass to named products and 48 convert a biomass-derived intermediate to a named product. This article surveys the distributions of projects in the first group only, relative to: raw material, product, scale of operation and location. It is limited by the restrictions on the information in the original articles: some source articles, perhaps through confidentiality, refer to “biomass” as the raw material and others refer to “chemicals” or “biochemicals” as the products.

Note that sugars and ethanol, which were relatively significant products in the biomass-fed processing arena 5 to 10 years ago, in terms of projects, are moderately important players in Fig. 2, relative to the other prominent categories. These are polymers, fuels, succinic acid and cellulose derivatives. It is encouraging from the viewpoint of potential for product added value and commercial process profitability that polymers (12%), succinic acid (7.5%), cellulose derivatives (5%), BTX and phenol (4.5%), food products (4.5%), other dicarboxylic acids (3.6%), fatty acids, diols, protein, carboxylic acids and lignin derivatives are all products in this data set. They have potentially higher added value than sugars, ethanol, fuels and biogas and they may be more profitable products.

Much more information can be extracted by searching the database, for example, for specific raw materials and products, specific company names, financial data and for technologies. The biomass-based chemical process industry is now very broadly based in its raw materials, nineteen different named biomass sources having been found in the 2017 data. This survey found 41 different named products from the 112 biomass-fed projects. The ranges of raw materials and products are broad. This bodes well for the industry in that many raw materials are being exploited, promoting potential flexibility of supply, and the wide product spectrum represents corresponding potential opportunities for added value, sales and profit. In 2017 there were 73 articles in CEP and CEN on commercial scale biomass conversion to specific products.

The distribution of recent biomass-derived products indicates strong interest in chemical conversion beyond sugars, ethanol, biogas and fuels, towards higher value added and more profitable products. These include polymers and more valuable intermediates, such as dicarboxylic acids, for use as monomers in polymer synthesis. Regarding biomass-fed processes in 2017, the U.S. hosted 34% of the projects, the largest player by far. Other countries are individually minor players by comparison but in 2017 there were biomass-fed chemical process projects in 21 countries. Further details of the spreadsheet database structure and contents are available from the author on request. READ MORE