More press releases coming out the past few days and I’m happy as a clam (I actually have no idea how you can determine if a clam is happy or not).

Anyway, Comet Biorefining recently announced that it will build its first commercial biomass sugar plant in Sarnia, Ontario, Canada, with a capacity of 60 million pounds per year (~27 ktpa)  producing high-purity dextrose sugars from locally-sourced corn stover and wheat straw.  The new plant will come online in 2018.

The company said its dextrose will be cost-competitive and will be the same as any high-purity dextrose that are being sold in the market now.  Dextrose sugars are usually the feedstock of choice for today’s biochemical production in North America.

Comet chose to locate in Sarnia by working with BioIndustrial Innovation Canada (BIC), the Ontario Federation of Agriculture (OFA) and an Ontario’s farmers’ cooperative. The blog recently posted about BIC’s own press release about their project on proving the economic value of cellulosic sugar supply chain. This project was developed based on previous studies dating back to 2010. The ultimate goal is to establish an economically viable, full-scale commercial cellulosic sugar plant of around 125 ktpa dry tonnes/year of cellulosic mixed sugars in Southern Ontario by 2018. This would reportedly require around 250 ktpa of dry tonnes/year of biomass.

I’ll report more about Comet Biorefining and its technologies on Tecnon OrbiChem’s February Bio-Materials newsletter.