One of the key for success for renewable chemicals players (and advanced ethanol producers) is to lower down cost for their feedstock through the use of non-food biomass. This is where cellulosic sugar and enzyme developers are hard at work trying to strip away as much of the valuable carbohydrates as possible from their sticky origin.

A new cellulosic sugar developer, Midori Renewables, founded by investment firm Flagship VentureLabs has deployed its new catalyst technology dubbed Breaking the Biomass Barrier™, which melts non-food biomass into low cost sugar. Unlike most technology being developed these days, the catalyst is made of a solid material (not an enzyme, microorganism or aqueous acid), that can be easily separated from the reaction and be reused.

The technology can be bolt-on to existing corn, sugarcane or palm oil processing facilities, the company said. Midori will begin constructing a commercial demonstration facility in 2014, and is currently in partnering discussions with several engineering procurement and construction firms to build the plant.

The blog posted in January some of the players in the cellulosic sugar area. Not mentioned on that post was Agrivida, and American Process Inc. I’m sure there are more out there that blog has missed mentioning.

Just another thing to note are increasing cellulase and hemicellulase enzymes being introduced from companies such as Novozymes, DuPont, Codexis, Dyadic, DSM…