🏭 The Column: February 7, 2025

Good morning. Today we’re talking about Avantium’s PEF licensing progress, Syensqo’s supply agreement with a polymeric membrane producer, and using pyrolysis oil from tires to make carbon black.

Things Happened:

Avantium wants big PEF plants

PEF, or polyethylene furanoate, is a yet-to-be-commercialized biodegradable alternative to the world’s most popular polyester: polyethylene terephthalate (PET). It’s produced very similarly to PET—except instead of reacting ethylene glycol (MEG) with terephthalic acid (PTA), MEG is reacted with 2,5-furandicarboxylic acid (FDCA). Avantium has been working on FDCA and PEF for over a decade, and with their recently started up their demonstration scale (5 KTA) FDCA plant, progress is becoming a lot more tangible. And now, just this past Wednesday, Avantium announced the signing of a joint development agreement with an EPC firm to marry their exist melt state polymerization process with Polymetrix’s solid state polymerization process, because the solid state process enables higher molecular weights that are better fit for bottles, films, and fibers. Avantium hopes to license the combined process from end to end. [LINK]

Syensqo and Ardent’s agreement

Ardent, previously known as Compact Membrane Systems, is commercializing a silver-embedded amorphous fluoropolymer membrane for gas separations—specifically for separating propylene from propane, and for separating CO2 from flue gas (that’s called point source carbon capture). They raised $16m in their Series A about a year and a half ago, and things seem to be chugging along because they just signed a supply agreement with Syensqo (who is presumably producing the polymer that Ardent needs for its membranes). The CO2 capture angle is driven by the fact that these membranes are compact and fully electric, so there are fewer hurdles to adoption. They probably need their CO2 capture business to take off to meet their Series A valuation, but I feel good about Ardent’s chances because the olefin-paraffin business has good product market fit, it’s just a smaller market. [LINK]

Carbon black from depolymerized tires

When I say carbon black, I’m really referring to a bunch of different carbon blacks, all of which are different varieties of aggregated carbon nanoparticles. Those nanoparticles vary in size and by surface chemistry, and the aggregates they form vary in size (number of nanoparticles per clump) and by structure (branch length, etc.). Regardless, those carbon nanoparticles are normally made via the incomplete combustion of some petroleum-based feedstock, and most of it ends up becoming a reinforcing filler in tires (tires make up 70% of the $26 billion carbon black market). Orion, who was once part of Evonik, specializes in the production of carbon blacks and makes them from various feedstocks, including acetylene and pyrolysis oil from used tires. They just signed a deal with a Polish tire recycler called Contec, who will now supply Orion with their pyrolysis oil. [LINK]

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Other Things Happened:

ChiralVision and Ecovyst are collaborating to bring new immobilized enzymes to market. Air Liquide is building another ASU in Japan for their semiconductor market. The United Arab Emirates is getting their first methanol plant. Repsol is putting $800m into its waste-to-methanol project. Thyssenkrupp and Novonesis are launching an enzymatic esterification technology. Kurita is merging with Avista. Stamicarbon is revamping a urea plant in China.