ZeaChem exceeds demonstration scale goals for acetic acid recovery, purity

ZeaChem, a developer of biorefineries for the conversion of renewable biomass into fuels and chemicals, today announced it has produced bio-based acetic acid surpassing the company’s demonstration plant targets for recovery and purity, and the results have been replicated using two different commercial vendors. Acetic acid is salable to various manufacturing industries for the production of film, bottles and fibers among other products. Global demand for acetic acid is 14.3 billion pounds per year.

Current U.S. production capacity is nearly 6 billion pounds per year with sales of approximately $1 billion. Acetic acid is also ZeaChem’s intermediate building block for the production of cellulosic ethanol and bio-based chemicals. ZeaChem intends to scale to a commercial biorefinery upon successful operations at its 250,000 gallon-per-year facility, which is proposed to be built in Boardman, Oregon. The core technology of the facility will begin to come online in 2010.

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Tags: biofuels, cellulosic ethanol

Category: Producer News