181
|
Small
Business Vertec
Biosolvents LLC 411
Business Center Drive Suite
111 Mt. Prospect, IL 60056-6040 Dr.
Rathin Datta, Principal Investigator, Mr.
James E. Opre, Business Official, 847-803-0575 DOE
Grant No. DE-FG02-01ER86137 Amount:
$100,000 |
Research
Institution Argonne
National Laboratory ITD,
Building 201, 243A 9700
S. Cass Avenue Argonne, IL 60439 |
Advanced Membrane Technology for Biosolvents
Total
solvent usage in the U.S. is 3.8 million tons per year, and due to toxicity and
environmental needs, a large fraction needs to be replaced.
Ethyl lactate and its blends with soy methyl ester have excellent
solvating properties and, when price and other market penetration issues are
considered, approximately 25% of the solvent usage can be addressed by these
biosolvents. This project will use
pervaporation membrane separations technology to develop a “direct” process
for the large scale commercial production of ethyl lactate.
The process would be very economical and would not produce salt wastes.
Phase I will establish the initial feasibility of the direct process
through (1) development and testing of new pervaporation membrane materials with
high ammonia affinity and fluxes, and (2) cracking and esterification with high
boiling alcohols.
Commercial Applications And Other Benefits as described by awardee: The addressable market volume is very large, 2 billion lb/yr for the U.S. and approximately 5 billion lb/yr worldwide. In addition to the biosolvents, the availability of low-cost ethyl lactate in large market volumes will support the use of ethyl lactate as a chemical intermediate for biodegradable plastics, propylene glycol, acrylates, and other products, an additional potential market greater than 7 billion lb/yr in the U.S.