TopCat update: Anellotech hits new operating mark, biobased BTX takes a key step forward

March 29, 2018 |

The unit is called TCat-8 but it really should be TopCat, befitting its position astride the world of bio-based catalytic pyrolyis. In the latest update, Anellotech completed two weeks of continuous operation of the seven-story tall TCat-8 pilot plant, just two months after completing commissioning. With the completion of the milestone, the company received an additional $6M investment from Suntory, part of a previously announced $15 million package. Suntory’s total investment in Anellotech’s program is now more than $30 million.

The key element

For many it will be the Suntory investment, for others the technical milestones. For us, we look at the speed. The company reached 24 hour operation last spring, and completed commissioning at the end of the year.

The technical milestones in more depth

Anellotech’s pilot unit

“We have demonstrated continuous, stable operation of the TCat-8 pilot unit over a two week period as the first key step in demonstrating Bio-TCat’s commercial viability,” said Dr. Charles Sorensen, Chief Technology Officer of Anellotech.

“In a relatively short time period, our pilot plant has generated a large amount of high-quality data which gives us confidence that we will be able to achieve our longer-term operational goals. Continuous catalyst circulation, the injection of solid biomass feedstock into the reactor, and several internal recycle loops create numerous complexities that Anellotech engineers and scientists, together with our R&D partners IFPEN and Johnson Matthey, have successfully addressed.”

Let focus in on three elements there. Continuous catalyst circulation, the injection of solid biomass feedstock into the reactor, and several internal recycle loops. Informed observers have been and will continue to look carefully at process performance. Anellotech ranks very high on the “say when you’ve done it, and not before” scale, and when Charles Sorenson and David Sudolsky put their names on a statement that “Anellotech engineers and scientists, together with our R&D partners IFPEN and Johnson Matthey, “have successfully addressed” these “numerous complexities,” that’s meaningful.

The benzene opportunity

Suntory’s strong interest is in paraxylene. Worth noting that Anellotech’s technology provides a complementary opportunity for companies interested in using bio-benzene or toluene to reduce greenhouse gas emissions associated with ABS, nylons, polycarbonates, polyurethanes, detergents, and other aromatic-containing products currently made from petroleum.

Clothing, legos, nylon. There’s a cornucopia of brand owners using BTX molecules and yakking about their commitment to sustainability, and we don’t see too many of them investing into the supply chain to get it. Hmm. You get what you tolerate.

After all, as CEO David Sudolsky noted to The Digest, “100 million tons of BTX is produced every year and grows 4%. A lot of brand owners have sustainability goals, but there just haven’t been options for engineered benzene derived polymers. For those customers, we have something which is not just talk, but a 25 meter tall unit that you can see, with loblolly pine going in, and BTX molecules coming out.”

It would be a striking step forward for customers and their chemical partners to commit, as the airlines did, to not increasing their benzene carbon footprint from, say, 2025 forward. Implemented, say, in North America first, then Europe. That would, right there, create a viable and substantial market for low-carbon BTX of millions of tons per year.

The Anellotech product set

Anellotech is producing aromatics (primarily benzene, toluene, and xylenes) from loblolly pine feedstock, as “drop in” replacements for their identical petroleum-derived counterparts, and can be used in manufacturing plastics such as polyester, nylon, polycarbonate, polystyrene, or for renewable transportation fuels. The low carbon footprint of Bio-TCat products can help chemical producers and consumer brand owners meet challenging corporate environmental sustainability goals.

Or, you can simply use the ingredients as sustainable gasoline blendstock.

Next steps

An LCA analysis to substantiate the greenhouse gas emission reductions is going to be high on the list for most partners — after all, these are drop-in replacement molecules, and the attriibute of interest is sustainability and quantifying the benefit is going to rapidly become a must-have.

The R&D program will generate bio-based BTX samples for use in making prototype samples of PET polymer for bio-based bottles and benzene-based polymers such as ABS, polycarbonate and polyurethane for strategic investors.

Anellotech has begun an extensive development program to optimize process variables, validate process economics, confirm catalyst long-term performance, and obtain the critical data for commercial plant design. As these studies continue, TCat-8 is producing evaluation quantities of renewable aromatic chemicals for conversion into bio-based polymer prototypes and for bio-fuel certification programs. Not to mention confirming the process economics.

More on Anellotech’s backstory

Make Haste Slowly: The story of Anellotech’s journey towards a bio-BTX breakthrough

The bio route to BTX: The Digest’s 2017 Multi-Slide Guide to Anellotech

The partnership backstory

The alliance with Suntory, one of Anellotech’s principal strategic investment partners, began in 2012 with the goal of enabling the development and commercialization of cost-competitive 100 percent bio-based plastics for use in beverage bottles. Suntory currently uses 30 percent plant-derived materials for its Mineral Water Suntory Tennensui brands and is pursuing the development of a 100 percent bio-based PET bottle through this alliance, as part of its commitment to sustainable business practices.

IFPEN is the process development and scale-up partner, Johnson Matthey is the catalyst development partner, and Axens is the partner for industrialization, commercialization, global licensing and technical support. Strategic partners in the BTX supply chain, including Suntory and Toyota Tsusho, as well as other confidential strategic investors, also have provided funding to Anellotech.

The feedstock backstory

Anellotech is currently evaluating loblolly pine and eventually other sustainable bio-feedstocks at TCat-8, operated within the South Hampton Resources chemical plant in Silsbee, Texas.

By using renewable and readily available non-food feedstock materials the Bio-TCat process is less expensive compared to bio-based processes relying on sugar as a feedstock, and avoids competition with the food chain. And, for those of you less familiar with it, loblolly is one of the ubiquitous southern yellow pines you find from Texas to the Carolinas. Loblolly is the most fragrant of them. When you smell rosemary, that’s loblolly.

The Bottom Line

The process runs continuously. Fantastic. But at what rate, yield? Did they make plenty of BTX, or a spoonful? Difficult to get Anellotech to say.

But CEO David Sudolsky did explain to The Digest, “The learning from the 14 day run is part of our due diligence package for use in discussions with new potential partners. So if we only made a pound of BTX we might have only very curtailed meetings!”

That’s much better. Let’s not underestimate the challenges ahead, but there were some very interesting milestones buried within the mutli-week operation headline. It’s easier to get a four-star general to divulge the nuclear launch codes than to get Anellotech to make predictions about the future — but these are encouraging signs that renewable BTX at scale may only be 3-4 years away. The company limits itself to “one year plus” as a time frame for the studies at this stage of development — after that, time to build a commercial plant, which could be completed within say 18-24 months.

Category: Top Stories

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