MOSCOW (MRC) -- Gevo Inc. has entered into an agreement with Clariant Corp., one of the world’s leading specialty chemical companies, to develop catalysts to enable Gevo’s ETO technology, as per Hydrocarbonprocessing.
The company’s ETO technology, which uses ethanol as a feedstock, produces tailored mixes of propylene, isobutylene and hydrogen, which are valuable as standalone molecules or as feedstocks to produce other products, such as diesel fuel and commodity plastics, that would be drop-in replacements for their fossil-based equivalents.
Underpinning the ETO technology was Gevo’s invention of proprietary mixed-metal oxide catalysts that produce polymer grade propylene or high-purity isobutylene, along with hydrogen in high yields in a single processing step from conventional fuel-grade specification ethanol.
Clariant is committed to the development and scale-up of the catalyst, which is expected to continue the advancement of the ETO technology, while Gevo focuses the majority of its internal resources on the ongoing optimization of its core isobutanol technology. Once the ETO technology has been successfully developed and scaled-up, Clariant will be in a position to produce quantities of the catalyst needed to meet commercial production requirements. As with its isobutanol technology, Gevo anticipates growing its ETO business through licensing.
Gevo has filed a series of patent applications related to this technology. The ETO technology has the potential to provide the estimated 25 billion gallon global ethanol industry a much broader set of end-product market and margin opportunities, beyond the use of ethanol as a gasoline blendstock. It also has the potential to address a variety of markets in the chemicals and fuels fields, such as automobile parts, packaging, durable goods made of plastic, renewable diesel fuel and renewable hydrogen for the chemical, energy and fuel cell markets.
We remind that, as MRC informed before, in 2014, CB&I and Clariant announced that their new Ziegler-Natta (ZN) polypropylene catalyst plant in Louisville, Kentucky, was on schedule to begin production in 2015. The plant is part of a long-term strategic partnership between Clariant’s catalysts business and CB&I’s Lummus Novolen Technology business. Based at Clariant’s largest US production hub, the new facility will combine innovative catalysts jointly developed by both companies with high-capacity output.
Clariant AG is a Swiss chemical company and a world leader in the production of specialty chemicals for the textile, printing, mining and metallurgical industries. It is engaged in processing crude oil products in pigments, plastics and paints.
MRC