Ashland to showcase its complete solutions for paints and coatings at ECS 2011
- Publisher
- Elsevier Science
- Year
- 2011
- Weight
- 46 KB
- Volume
- 2011
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 1351-4210
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
Building block for change: a low-cost route to produce glucaric acid
Rivertop Renewables of Montana claims to have developed a low-cost production process for glucaric acid, one of the top 12 renewable building block chemicals listed by a 2004 US Department of Energy report. The company's proprietary carbohydrate oxidation technology is also suited for large-scale development and can be used to produce a range of organic acid platforms. Rivertop, however, is focused on using the technology to convert glucose into glucaric acid. The firm intends to initially market its glucaric acid as a detergent builder. It can also be used as a concrete admixture and as a starting material for building value-added chemicals. Glucaric acid can also be incorporated into health supplements and cosmetic ingredients. Rivertop hopes to start up a 45.3 tonne/y pilot plant in 3Q 2011 for production and testing of its glucaric acid-based formulations. The firm aims to subsequently build a world-scale glucaric acid plant with an estimated 27,000 tonne/y capacity on the basis of an agreement with a large detergent producer. Steven Donen, the new vice president of process development and engineering at Rivertop, is tasked with achieving high-volume production.