The 40 Hottest Technologies of 2018 – as voting gets underway, the nominees in depth
Iowa Corn Promotion Board’s single-step, thermocatalytic process for making Monoethylene Glycol (MEG) from sugar
What does it do, how does it work, who is it aimed at?
This technology uses a single reactor with two zones in series to make biobased monoetheylene glycol (bio-MEG) from sugar. MEG is currently used to make bottled water bottles, soda bottles, and polyester clothes. MEG is also the primary component of antifreeze. This novel process controls the cascade of retro-aldol and hydrogenation reactions needed to convert 1 glucose to 3 bio-MEG by separating the catalysts into separate zones. Each zone can be optimized independently and unproductive side products, such as sorbitol, can be avoided since glucose must pass through the retro-aldol zone before reaching the reducing zone. The process is ultimately aimed at lowering the price of bio-MEG to be more market competitive while driving the bioeconomy to a place where it can further erode the hold oil has on the chemicals space. Furthermore, this technology is wholly-owned by farmers who work to increase the demand of corn and value-added products from corn through the checkoff.
The commercial process for making bio-MEG converts sugar to ethanol to ethylene to ethylene oxide to MEG whereas Their process is simply sugar to MEG. Their process funnels all the carbon in the sugar through the cascade to MEG by removing fermentation which maintains a higher atom economy and increases theoretical yield; sugar and MEG have the same C:O ratio and the commercial process strips the oxygen only to add it back in.
Competitively, what gives this technology an edge?
Their process utilizes two separate catalysts in two separate zones. Competitive technologies use either both catalysts on the same support or separate catalysts occupying the same space in the reactor. The two zones allow for independent optimization of the reactions and lower amounts of byproducts formed when sugar is allowed to react with catalyst 2. Using this concept and rapid heating of the feed, Their process affords higher MEG yields, lower byproduct yields, and higher feed concentration; all of these are an edge in performance which lead to an edge in cost.
What stage of development is this technology at right now?
They are in the process towards scale-up and are interested in finding partners from the corn, bio-MEG, and bio-PET value chain interested in commercialization.
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