The 40 Hottest Technologies of 2018 – as voting gets underway, the nominees in depth
Sweetwater Energy’s Sunburst pretreatment technology
What does it do, how does it work, who is it aimed at?
Sweetwater’s Sunburst technology efficiently pretreats biomass by combining thermo, mechanical and chemical reactions into one, simple, elegant, highly-scalable, patented reactive extrusion system. Within 30 seconds, the Sunburst technology 1) reduces feedstock particle (starting from commercial woodchip size), into homogenous 19-micron size particles, 2) leverages the small uniform particle size and direction injection of steam to catalyze a dilute acid reaction that 3) hydrolyzes 97% of the hemicellulose and 25% of the cellulose (the amorphous regions) into monomeric sugars with undetectable levels of inhibitors, as the reaction is quenched after only a few seconds. As a result, Sweetwater produces clean cellulosic sugars, clean, non-sulfonated lignin that is free of carbohydrates, and a microcrystalline cellulose product that has nanocellulose characteristics. The markets for these “platform” products are vast.
Competitively, what gives this technology an edge?
Sweetwater’s Sunburst is the first biomass deconstruction technology that can operate economically at scale to completely break down the entire biomass into high-value components. The resulting slurry post Sunburst’s 30-second process contains: soluble C5 and C6 monomeric sugars, microcrystalline cellulose (MCC) and native lignin — obtaining value from every ounce of the feedstock. Obtaining high-quality, cost competitive products from every portion of the biomass, combined with the low capital cost and high scalability are what makes Sunburst transformative.
What stage of development is this technology at right now?
Sweetwater is currently operating a 33mm Sunburst system that can process between 3-4MT o biomass input per day. This system is two steps below the commercial-scale 88mm system that will process 75MT/day feedstock input. Additionally, they have tested with Their manufacturer at commercial throughputs. Their first commercial-scale Sunburst system has already been ordered from the manufacturer and will be up and operational in Fall 2019.
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