The company, Renmatix, has developed a water-based process it calls Plantrose that deploys hydrolysis to extract cellulosic sugar from wood waste, agricultural waste and other biomass at a price competitive with Brazilian sugar cane, Mike Hamilton, the startup’s chief executive, said in an interview.
Brazil is the world’s largest sugar cane producer and the current high price of the commodity – around $600 a ton – has proved problematic for refiners of ethanol, biodiesel and other biofuels that use sugar as a feedstock. That has prompted renewable fuels companies like Amyris and Solazyme to focus on higher-profit biochemical markets.
“What we’re trying to do here with Renmatix and the Plantrose process is have alternatives to imported oil,” says Hamilton, a veteran of chemicals manufacturer Rohm and Haas.
Or as John Melo, Amyris’ chief executive, put it at Renmatix’s unveiling Wednesday, “Sugar is the new oil.”
Renmatix has raised $21 million from Silicon Valley venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.
“Unlocking sugar from cellulosic biomass is one of the most important steps we can take,” Kleiner partner John Doerr said at the press event in King of Prussia, Penn., where Renmatix is relocating from Georgia. “Sugar is the new crude that will transform the American economy.”
Amyris, for instance, is a San Francisco Bay Area company that bases much of its operations in Brazil, where the government and private sector have developed an infrastructure to grow and process sugar cane for biofuels and biochemicals.
“I would love to make products in the U.S.,” said Melo, who sits on Renmatix’s board. “To do that we need infrastructure and we need investment and we need good technology to be able to actually turn the biomass into very cheap sugar.”
Hamilton says Renmatix is able to drive down costs by using water as it’s main solvent rather than bioengineered organisms, acids or other expensive agents that take time to transform biomass into sugars.
“The beauty of the Plantrose process is that speed wins,” he says. “We do not add any other significant consumables other than water. We use a significant amount of water but recycle the bulk of it.”
Renmatix currently is operating a small demonstration plant in Georgia and expects to begin construction in 2012 on a full-scale commercial facility to produce 100,000 pounds of cellulosic sugar annually.
Hamilton says Renmatix will initially produce sugar from wood waste, locating production facilities in rural areas that once were home to the pulp and paper industries. He said the company plans to own and operate its production plants and sell the sugar to biofuels and chemical companies but will consider licensing its technology elsewhere in the world.
“We’re a sugar pure play that will enable the renewable industry to flourish,” he says.
