KiOR: The inside true story of a company gone wrong

Starting up at the KBR Pilot Plant

A dispute erupted within the KiOR community in September 2008 over the testing program for the FCC Pilot Plant at the KBR facility in Houston. Issues included the biomass feed, which included the pretreated biomass feeds, catalysts and process conditions.

Some emphatically stated that before any new materials be tested under different process conditions, and with other process variables, a systematic calibration of the equipment and processing scheme should be first done to establish a reference base-line.

“Especially since this FCC Pilot Plant had not be used before for pyrolyzing biomass in the presence of a catalyst,” as one KiOR staffer would recall later.

It was not a difficult test series to mount.  Well known process parameters were available from many similar tests and equipment used before, and there was research papers published regarding optimum process conditions for maximizing bio-oil yields, using sand as a heat carrier, in the absence of a catalyst. Ensyn, for example, had been using sand for years as a heat carrier in a pyrolysis reaction.

The purpose? An equipment check and standardization test, including the duplication of published similar test results, would have given information to confirm that the equipment was working as intended, and given a baseline of performance for this FCC pilot unit, compared to pyrolyzing biomass in different reactor designs, under same process conditions and with the same heat transferring medium. In short, setting a starting point where the impact of a new KiOR reactor design and a new catalyst could be measured.

In a memo to staff dated September 18, 2008 and addressed to all KiOR personnel, entitled ‘KBR Plan’, CTO Paul O’Connor objected doing any calibration to establish a baseline, and the use of sand in the KBR FCC Pilot Plant equipment, and requested to take out from the 2008-09 Experimental plan the use of sand and equipment calibration. The reasoning is not clear. Possibly the costs and the timelines, based on KiOR’s timelines to scale and available cash. Perhaps other factors.

For sure, by the first week of October 2008, the FCC Pilot Plant at the KBR facility was ready to start testing KiOR’s BCC Process and Technology. The pretreated biomass feed and the catalyst were the same ones that were used in the tests performed at ITQ in Valencia earlier that year. The same set-up that hd led to the discouraging results were reported to KiOR the previous spring by ITQ.