Sugar Rush: The Race Is on to Commercialize Low-Cost, High-Quality Sugars from Nonfood Sources

by Bryan Sims (Biorefining Magazine) The biorefining industry is hungry for a low-cost, high-quality and readily available supply of sugar feedstock from nonfood biomass sources. A number of pure-play sugar technology developers and manufacturers like Renmatix, Virdia (formerly HCL CleanTech), Sweetwater Energy, Comet Biorefining Inc., Proterro and others are deeply involved in this specialized sector, jockeying for position in the sugar feedstock supply chain to feed demand. Collectively, they bring a unique set of core strengths, processes and long-term business approaches to deliver a consistent, readily convertible sugar feedstock that can compete on price and quality with crude oil feedstock for petroleum fuels and food-based industrial sugars from corn and sugarcane.

...Renmatix employs a patented, two-step, supercritical fluid hydrolysis technology platform—trademarked the Plantrose process—that can efficiently extract and solubilize C5 (hemicellulose) and C6 (cellulose) sugars from a variety of lignocellulosic biomass such as wood or agricultural residues when subjected to water at high temperature and pressure, all the while separating out the lignin.

...London, Ontario-based Comet Biorefining Inc. utilizes a unique biomass pretreatment process and enzymes to isolate and extract sugar, primarily monomeric glucose, and its lignin constituents.

...Essentially, each sugar product has to be customized to meet strict feedstock specifications. Virent employs a patented catalytic BioForming process technology at its 10,000 gallon per year demonstration facility in Madison, which converts soluble sugars from various biomass stocks into a range of advanced drop-in biofuels such as biogasoline and light and heavy diesel fractions, plus chemicals.

...If enough ready-to-use sugar feedstock volumes enter the market to meet high demand, its developers understand that a distributed, modular approach is the most practical avenue to achieve economies of scale.

... “We see not only supplying the technology to produce sugars, but also the modules to produce them because when you talk about small, distributed plants, they need to be very low in capital cost,” (Comet CEO and founder Andrew) Richard says.

...The company( Proterro) is optimizing a patent-pending biosynthetic process that combines an engineered photosynthetic microorganism, a cyanobacteria, with an advanced high-density, modular solid-phase bioreactor to produce its trademarked sucrose end product, called Protose. READ MORE and MORE (Bloomberg BusinessWeek)