Renmatix Supercritical Water Process for Cellulose Degradation Gains Momentum

Renamtix, a small King of Prussia Pennsylvania company, is gaining support for its degradation process for wood byproducts into fermentable sugars. The process uses supercritcal water to soften the wood. The company claims the process is patented, but Renmatix has no patents under its name.

BASF invested $30 million in the company, which means their must be something substantive in Renmatix investor pitches. $20 million was contributed by other investors. The biomass-to-sugar proto-industry has contracted lately as new enzymatic process prove difficult to scale up, and syngas routes choke competing with natural gas.

Renmatix approach may show an economic advantage for non-enzymatic routes. Their route also supports the green chemistry principle of not destroying bonds in the feedstock unnecessarily, when they could be used in later step.

Renmatix has a pilot plant that consumes 3000 kg/day of wood fiber, but suspiciously Renmatix does not report how much "industrial sugar" the process can produce per day.  What is "industrial sugar" anyway?" I suppose it is an impure sugar mixture sufficient to support yeast or bacterial fermentation, but not clean enough for animal feed.