9 November 2011
Overview
Rivertop Renewables has received $1.5 million from
Cultivian Ventures fund focused on accelarating
high technology in the food and agricutural sector.
Use of fund
The money will be used to
* continue commercialization of cost-competitive and
high performance biobased chemicals
* expand facilities for continued research and development
and precommercial production through
contract manufacturing deals
Core Technology
Rivertop's core technology is the proprietary process
which utilized nitric acid to oxidize sugars that produces
salts of sugar acids, such as glucaric acid, and other
biobased fine chemicals derived from other sugars
The company has refined its technology into
a catalytic process that
- reduces the amount of chemical inputs and consumption,
- minimizes the production of waste and
- increases the yield of feedstocks beyond glucose
such as
* xylose
* arabinose
* galactose
* as well as other mono- and polysaccharide
Scale-up production
Rivertop has been successfully producing
several pounds per month of glucaric acid at lab scale
at MONTEC for more than a year
Rivertop intends to increase output volume-about
100,000 pounds per year- at a semi-work pilot facility
planned for development at MonTEC.
For now, Rivertop is primarily producing batch quantities
for testing purposes prior to launching contract manufacturing deals
for commercialization of product, which are expected
to be announced later this year.
Business Potential
Detergent market
In the near-term Rivertops plans to initially enter a
$ 10 billion detergents market by applying its
biobased glucarate products as an effective and
cost-competitive replacement for the legacy ingredient
found in dishwasher detergent, tripolyphosphate
Corrosion and scale inhibition markets
Rivertop also intends to supply biobased glucaric acid to the
$ 8 billion corrosion and scale inhibitor markets
Other markets
* polymer applications including hydrogels,
* adhesives
* films
* flocculants
* and other multifunctional materials
More products to come
as the cost of these feedstocks come down or as
specialty applications drive demand, Rivertop will
explore the commercialization of others sugars such as
* xylaric acid
* arabinaric acid
* galactaric acid
