Environment & Regulations

Building success

Everything from perfumes to plasticisers, which have traditionally been made from fossil fuel derivatives, could soon be made in large volume from plant-based sources. Lou Reade reports

The chemicals industry is slowly reducing its reliance on fossil fuels as a source of chemical precursors and using a growing number of renewable sources of plant origin, such as sugar cane, corn or vegetable oils, as building blocks for a range of chemical products.

"The bio-based chemicals sector is poised to transform the production of industrial chemicals," says Marifaith Hackett, a chemical analyst at consultancy IHS, and author of a recent report on bio-based building blocks. "Like the biofuels industry, it seeks to replace fossil fuel-based feedstocks with plant-based starting materials."

There is a key difference, though. Whilst demand for biofuels is driven by regulation, demand for bio-based industrial chemicals depends on economic factors and customer demand. Economics, in Hackett's view "trump almost everything. Companies making renewable chemicals tell me that nobody will pay a premium: they have to be equivalent in price."
 
She points to two other factors behind the move towards renewable building blocks: corporate sustainability initiatives; and a long-term search for alternative feedstocks. "Chemicals manufacturers are interested in feedstock availability over the next ten to 20 years," she says. "They need to find new sources, as fossil fuels may not be available."
 
Regarding corporate sustainability, this is especially important for companies with consumer products. "Companies like Procter & Gamble are significant manufacturers of chemicals like surfactants," she says. "They, and others, have corporate goals to use renewable feedstocks - and you'll see more of that happening."
 
This move towards sustainable starting materials may seem incredibly new and modish, but Hackett points out that it is a well-established niche and that many renewable chemicals have been used for many years. Examples include citric acid and various fatty acids, which are all preferred precursors for other chemicals, the latter being common in cosmetics.
 
For now, the economics of some of these new systems are comparable with traditional routes, but she says that in the longer term this can be improved further still. "I think that renewable chemicals will continue to gain ground," says Hackett. "A breakthrough, from an economic point of view, would be if there was more widespread use of non-food based feedstocks. If the technology advanced far enough for us to use cell biomass, or cellulosics, that would be huge. In principle, it would be dirt cheap."
 
 
 
Myriant is on the verge of commercialising its route to bio-SA
 
Acid test
 
One US start-up company, Myriant, has already done some early work in this area, devising a process to make both lactic acid and succinic acid from cellulosic feedstocks, though not yet in commercial quantities. Chairman and CEO Stephen Gatto says that the ability to use non-food cellulosic feedstocks "gives us a critical competitive advantage".
 
Lactic acid is used mainly as the precursor for the biodegradable plastic polylactic acid, but succinic acid has far more diverse uses. In fact, it is one of the most promising alternative feedstocks, and has attracted the interest of many start-ups and major companies. Direct applications include as a flavouring in foods and drinks and it is also a precursor for many other chemicals, including dyes, perfumes, plasticisers and coatings.
 
Succinic acid is traditionally derived from fossil fuel. The process to do this is low volume and quite expensive. N-butane is converted into maleic anhydride, which is then converted into succinic acid using catalytic hydrogenation. Companies including Myriant, BioAmber, DSM and BASF are all pursuing ways to convert sustainable starting materials such as glucose into bio-succinic acid (bio-SA).
 
"This would make it much cheaper - and there are many potential ways that it could be done," says Hackett. The ability to make succinic acid more cheaply could lead to a drop in price, and a boom in availability for the material.
 
Myriant is building a 14,000 tonnes/year commercial bio-SA plant that is due to open in Lake Providence, Louisiana, in 2013. It will convert sugar into succinic acid using genetically engineered microorganisms. The company has already signed a distribution deal with Japan's Sojitz. Sojitz in turn plans to build a derivatives plant by 2015 that will consume around 7,000 tonnes/year of Myriant's material. Closer to home, Myriant also has an agreement with Davy Process Technology to produce butanediol (BDO), tetrahydrofuran (THF) and gamma butyrolactone from its succinic acid.
 
 
 
BASF and Purac use a specially designed microorganism to produce succinic acid from renewable feedstocks
 
Crowded market
 
Others are jostling with Myriant for a place in this growing market. DSM and Roquette are to build a 10,000 tonnes/year bio-SA plant at Roquette's facility in Cassano Spinola, Italy, to follow on from a demonstration plant at Roquette's Lestrem site in eastern France. This will open by mid-2012
 
The commercial plant will use a yeast-based fermentation process, which claims to work at much lower pH than alternative processes, allowing the product to be made more energy-efficiently. It will begin by using starch-based feedstocks, but the longer term plan is to switch to cellulosic biomass.
 
BASF has also leapt into bed with a smaller partner, and is on the point of a commercial launch. It has been collaborating with lactic acid specialist Purac (part of the Dutch CSM Group) on bio-SA since 2009. The two companies are now ready to build a 25,000 tonnes/year facility at Purac's site near Barcelona, with the intention of beginning production in 2013.
 
"In addition, we are planning a world-scale plant with a capacity of 50,000 tonnes/year to account for the expected demand growth," says Gerard Hoetmer, CEO of CSM. Their process uses the microorganism Basfia succiniciproducens, a natural producer of succinic acid that can process a variety of C3, C5 and C6 renewable feedstocks, including biomass sources.
 
BioAmber of the US has actually got there first: it already operates a 3,000 tonnes/year bio-SA plant in France and plans to add a new plant in Canada in 2013, with a start-up capacity of 17,000 tonnes/year and a projected full-scale capacity of 34,000 tonnes/year. The company also has plans to build a 65,000 tonnes/year plant in Thailand by 2014 and, at a later date, a similar-sized plant in either North America or Brazil.
 
All three of the planned plants, which are being built as part of BioAmber's partnership with Mitsui of Japan, will also produce bio-BDO. "Our partnership with Mitsui is key, because much of the market is in Asia," says Babette Petterson, senior vice president of marketing and sales.
 
 
 
Petterson - BioAmber's partnership with Mitsui is crucial
 
 
One of the challenges of commercialising the process has been to get costs down to an acceptable level, she adds, because about 60% of the cost of bio-SA comes from downstream processing. BioAmber worked with the Mid-Atlantic Technology Research & Innovation Centre to develop a novel isolation and purification process. This has been used at the French facility and BioAmber expects to use it in the Canadian plant too.
 
In collaboration with Lanxess, BioAmber has already developed bio-SA-based plasticisers. These could be used to replace phthalate-based plasticisers, which are banned from certain applications. Samples are already available and are expected to be commercialised this year. BioAmber is also working to produce tailored bio-SA plasticisers for customers of Solvin, a PVC-producing subsidiary of Solvay.
 
Petterson sees huge potential overall for bio-SA. "We think it will be used everywhere from high volume, low value applications like polyurethanes, to high value, low volume applications like personal care and flavourings," she says. 
 
Several other speciality chemicals could be made readily from sustainable sources. US-based Rennovia is concentrating its efforts on adipic acid, a key precursor for nylon production. Adipic acid is traditionally made using a four-step process from crude oil via cyclohexane but Rennovia's takes three: biomass to glucose, glucose to glucaric acid by selective oxidation and final conversion to adipic acid via selective hydrogenation. There is no genetic engineering involved here, as Rennovia's skill lies in developing sophisticated catalysts to drive each reaction. 
 
Another candidate chemical is epichlorohydrin (ECH), an important feedstock for the production of epoxy resins. This is also used to protect wind turbine blades, and is thus seeing increasing demand from the power-generating windmill industries in the Asia-Pacific region, as well as in the reinforcement of paper and water purification.
 
Traditionally, ECH is made by reacting propylene with chlorine. Solvay's Epicerol process uses glycerine - obtained as a by-product from the biofuel production - and reacts it with hydrochloric acid to make the precursor dichloropropanol. Dehydrochlorination leads to ECH. Solvay's Thai subsidiary, Vinythai, is building a plant to produce bio-based ECH, which is due to open this quarter.
 
 
 

From Online Issue: February 2012