KiOR: The inside true story of a company gone wrong

The switch to a two-pot reactor that didn’t happen

Members of the R&D team were beginning to see a fatal problem emerging with the one-pot design, in test results obtained at the ITQ Valencia Lab, as well as later on by the tests done at KBR’s Pilot Plant in Houston and subsequently at KiOR’s own KCR Pilot Plant.

The two distinct reactions taking place at the same time (i.e., the physical/Thermolysis and the chemical/decarboxylation/cracking), as it turns out, require individual customized process variables optimizations, and are different for each reaction. So, there’s what one source familiar with KiOR’s process described as “a gross compromise of the individual efficiencies of these two different processes, resulting in a very poor liquefaction and Bio-oil and Bio-oil yield, while a substantial amount of carbon and hydrogen are converted to carbon oxides and water.”

An inflection point

At this stage, these are lab discoveries. Certain results had been disappointing. And, there was disappointment in the efficacy of a single reactor to conduct both reactions simultaneously. It’s not surprising given the novelty of running biomass through a FCC reactor, modified or otherwise. Complicated physical and chemical reactions are taking place simultaneously, with side and cross reactions. It’s the nature of science to explore these puzzles and solve problems.

It was a bleak but not fatal outlook. Better results were obtained with a modified HTC. A new “Two-pot” system, having individual reactors for thermolysis and for cracking, could have been pursued aggressively at this inflection point. In fact, Brady, Cordle, Stamires and Loezos filed a patent application on such a KiOR technology, which was granted in 2012. More on that here.

Prior to the IPO, these steps were not taken in a systematic way, The Digest was told.