Remember when Gevo was in a patent war with the now-defunct Butamax on isobutanol production and application processes? It turned out that Gevo had to pivot from isobutanol to producing ethanol instead. More recently, the company announced that it has received from the US Patent Office (PTO) an intellectual property (12,043,587 B2) covering an ethanol-to-olefins (ETO) process.
This patent protects Gevo’s ETO process, which makes three and/or four carbon olefins, in addition to ethylene from ethanol (e.g., propylene), in a single step with a high degree of selectivity and control. The ETO process is expected to reduce energy and capital costs because of the fewer unit operations involved and reduce the complexity of the process design. The ETO process technology can be optimized to produce fuels and/or chemicals, the latter of which has been licensed to LG Chem, Ltd. under the previously disclosed joint development agreement. The companies are reportedly working to scale up the process for chemicals.
Gevo has been pursuing simplified alcohol to olefin technology since 2007.
In the years that the Green Chemicals Blog covered the market of ethanol-derived chemicals, such as ethylene and associated ethylene derivatives, this industry showed a mixed bag of few successes and several dropouts. Braskem continues to single-handedly commercialize polyethylene (PE) and ethylene vinyl acetate (EVA) using sugarcane ethanol feedstock. LanzaTech is forging its CO2-based ethanol into various chemical intermediates, but so far, most of the downstream products that its partners produce are sample/demonstrative volumes. India Glycols and Croda have struggled to market more volumes of ethanol-derived ethylene glycol and ethylene oxide in the past 3-5 years, respectively.
The good news is a resurgence of interest in and investments in ethanol-derived chemical intermediates. New Energy Blue partnered with Dow for the production of ethylene using cellulosic ethanol. Braskem ‘s partnership with SCG Chemicals is still active, and their joint venture is looking to invest in a 200 ktpa ethanol-derived PE in Thailand.
Braskem is also looking to invest in ethanol-derived polypropylene (PP) in the USA. Aside from Gevo and Braskem, Citroniq Chemicals is another company in the USA that has developed a process (in partnership with Lummus) to produce propylene from ethanol. The majority of activities in the renewable propylene space use the mass balance system, which mixes bio-based naphtha or propane with fossil-based or chemically recycled feedstock. The mass balance system is another topic that needs its own separate post.
Speaking of cellulosic ethanol, Clariant finally sold its facility in Podari, Romania, in late July to the International Chemical Investors Group (ICIG). The site will be operated by ICIG’s biotechnology subsidiary Corden BioChem, which already operates one of Europe’s largest fermentation plants at the industrial park in Frankfurt-Höchst, Germany. The Podari site will provide Corden BioChem with aerobic fermentation capacity of 1,500 m³ (gross volume) and a new capacity of 10,000 m³ for anaerobic fermentation.
ICIG is reportedly planning to invest in necessary downstream operations. Several products in the company’s portfolio (via its subsidiaries) could probably use the new fermentation capacity. These products include WeylChem’s Velvetol® bio-based polyols derived from 1,3-propanediol (PDO) and Vynova Group’s bio-circular PVC, which is currently manufactured using ethylene derived from bio-based naphtha using the mass balance system. To close the loop on this story, Germany-based Haltermann Carless was also dabbling in using fermentation-derived isododecane in partnership with…you guess it…Gevo. In 2022, Haltermann Carless produced more than 50 tons of cosmetic-grade isododecane at its production site in Speyer, Germany.
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