Takin’ Cellulosic to the Mud Spa

Out of the unlikely bioeconomy hub of West Palm Beach, Florida, Alliance BioEnergy Plus has revealed what it describes as the “successful completion of its yearlong efforts to optimize its patented CTS technology to extract 100% of the sugar from virtually any cellulosic feed-stock after having it completed and proven by major industry ethanol producers.”

Without naming names, Alliance also said that it is in negotiations with several “major industry producers-and-distributors” of ethanol and cellulosic sugars, with an aim of forming a JV or a marketing and sales agreement for its technology.

We’ve heard from ALLM — presently traded as an over-the-counter penny stock — that for a 100 million gallon ethanol plant its technology can boost revenues by as much as $100 million and profits by $48 million.

For ALLM, there’s the tasty prospect of a $5 million one-time fee and a 6% royalty of gallons of cellulosic ethanol produced.

The technology

Alliance controls the master license agreement that the University of Central Florida struck with a company called Carbolosic, which ALLM owns in a JV with Thor Renewable Energy Singapore.  The patent estate include three issued patents and 15 filed and pending patents revolving around the core CTS (cellulose to sugar) technology — and the exclusive CTS rights for North America (Canada, US, and Mexico) and Africa.

What is CTS?

According to Alliance, the CTS process is the “only known patented, dry mechanical process that can convert virtually any cellulose material into sugars and other products in a matter of minutes with no liquid acids, no applied heat, pressure or hazardous materials of any kind.”

Progress to scale

The commercial pilot/demonstration and research facility, Ek Laboratories, came online in June 2015.  Dr. Richard Blair, inventor of the CTS process and Director of Ek Laboratories, along with Dr. Zhilin Xie began running the CTS process at a 2.5 ton per day scale, using hay as a control feedstock.

The problem that CTS addresses

To make cellulosic ethanol you basically need three steps. First, you need to extract the sugars from the cellulose; second, ferment the sugars into ethanol; third, distill the broth to separate the alcohol from the water and impurities.

Of these, the hardest is the first, the extraction of workable sugars. Typically, two hydrolysis methods are commonly used: acid hydrolysis and enzymatic hydrolysis.

In the case of acid, if you use dilute acids, you need relatively high temperatures and pressures, which skyrockets the cost. Use concentrated acids, and there’s a purification step to remove acids which has proven problematic to several ventures — whether the acid is used in pre-treatment or for the whole of the hydrolysis.

Then there’s enzymatic hydrolysis. Enzymes have been expensive to date, and you need a constant supply, and they require generally some acid pretreatment which brings us back to the purification problem. Cellulosic ethanol is a reality at several plants around the country, but operating continuously, at nameplate capacity, and at commercially-competitive costs, has proven more difficult.

The solution, mechanocatalysis?

As Professor Richard Blair at the University of Central Florida, principal inventor of the CTS process, describes it, “solids can be effective in mechanically induced catalysis and that layered structures exhibit the best catalytic activity. We have observed products due to catalytic hydrolytic depolymerization, retro-aldol reactions, dehydration, oxidation, and hydrogenation. Previous work has shown that layered acidic aluminosilicates like kaolin can be used to depolymerize cellulose. We have also found that the same silicates can be used to induce dehydration in sugars and alcohols.”

As US Patent 8,062,428 “Mechanocatalytic Production of Chemicals from Biomass” describes it, “the inventors have unexpectedly found that when a solid acid material is combined with a cellulose-containing material and agitated, a high yield of soluble sugars can be produced. In the process, the agitation of the material, typically in a mill, provides the kinetic energy necessary to drive the hydrolysis reaction while the solid acid material has a surface acidity that aids in hydrolyzing the glycosidic bonds of the cellulose material.”

Where’s the water coming from for the hydrolysis reaction. The investors disclosed that  if “the solid acid material has a sufficient existing water content, the water of the solid acid material can provide the water necessary for the hydrolysis reaction without the need for added water. “

Kaolin and bentonite are given as examples. Also, fuller’s earth can be used.

Attacking hemicellulose and lignin

The inventors disclosed that “when the cellulose-containing material is a lignocellulosic material, the solid acid material may also hydrolyze the hemicellulose and lignin of the lignocellulosic material”, which can “can also be decomposed into useful products, namely further soluble sugars and aromatic hydrocarbons, such as vanillin, respectively. In this way, the present invention can eliminate waste from the hydrolysis of lignocellulosic material, as well as eliminate the need to pre-treat the cellulose material before hydrolyzing the lignocellulosic material, as in known processes.”

The investors also looked at the use of solid superacids instead of clays. “Superacids may be defined as acids stronger than 100% sulfuric acid (also known as Brönsted superacids).”

The economics

2.5 tons per day — roughly, five hale bales — well, that’s certainly a strong pilot-scale although at 70 gallons per ton it would take more than 1000 tons per day to produce 30 million gallons of cellulosic ethanol at one facility. So, some robustness testing is in order.

We don’t have much to go on for economics, excepting the headline economics of $48 million gross margin from $100 million in sales. Leaving $52 million for cost, of which we know that $6.3 million goes to Alliance in royalties and the master license (which we amortized over 15 years).

A $120 million plant and a $1.26 per gallon operating cost, amortized over 15 years, would produce those kinds of margins for a 30 million gallon nameplate capacity. Just for illustration.

The Digest’s Take

It’s early days, but a technology well worth a look. We’ve reported calcined solid catalysts is use with biomass elsewhere, as in the KiOR process — though that it pyrolytic not mechanical in nature. And, we’ve seen mechanical systems used to grind biomass to release sugars — Edeniq’s Cellunator comes to mind.

Mechanical milling? It does break bonds.

Biggest bug-a-boo? Operation at nameplate for a long-time  — all that biomass running through a system without a lot of water to help push it along, especially with water-absorbing clays?  We’ve seen technologies that sailed through pilot and demo scale only to falter at 1000 ton per day when anything from tennis shoes to rakes are coming through with the biomass.

If you think about it, kaopectate treatment for digestive tract issues refers to the original formulation of kaolin and pectin. Put another way, kaolin and bentonite are muds, when you get right down to it. Think of it like a mud-mask applied to your face, that draws out and absorbs impurities. Put large amounts of it to work on the impurities found in biomass, and it’ll be fascinating to see what happens.