Terrabon vs Virent: Who's the Best?

Background: This is a Sweet Sixteen (third round), Central Regional match-up between #2 seed Virent and #6 seed Terrabon, in the 2011 Transformative Technologies tourney, from Biofuels Digest.

Voting: Open to all Biofuels Digest subscribers. Voting links are in the Biofuels Digest daily newsletter. To subscribe (free), visit here.

The winner gets: Most votes advances to the Elite Eight (round of 8), and a shot at the Biofuels Final Four.

The loser: Goes home.

Laurels: Virent is the 11th ranked company in the 2010-11 50 Hottest Companies in Bioenergy poll. Terrabon is currently #39.

The match-up: It’s a Battle of the Chemical Engineers. Virent took 65 percent of the votes in its first round battle with Blue Marble Biomaterials, and 52 against Waste Manageemnt in the second round. Terrabon prevailed over Metabolix by 65-35 in the first round, then ZeaChem 53-47.

Virent’s patented catalytic BioForming process combines proprietary aqueous phase reforming (APR) technology with established petroleum refining techniques to generate the same range of hydrocarbon molecules now refined from petroleum.

Terrabon’s MixAlco is an advanced bio-refining technology used by Terrabon’s experienced staff of chemical engineers to convert low-cost, readily available, non-food, non-sterile biomass into valuable chemical precursors such as organic acids, ketones and secondary alcohols that can be processed into renewable hydrocarbon fuels.

Deep Dive Data on Virent

Virent’s complete Hot 50 / Transformative Technologies profile is here.