Sustainable chemical startup, Origin Materials, is planning to license parts of Avantium's sugar-to-FDCA technology for its upcoming site.

Some context:

Origin developed a process that converts dry wood residues into chloromethyl furfural (CMF), hydrothermal carbon (HTC), levulinic acid, and furfural. CMF is where most of the action begins: you can use that stuff as a starting point for making PET, PEF, various other polyesters, polyurethanes, and polyamides. How exactly you go from CMF to those derivatives varies wildly, but no matter how you slice it, if you want to make PEF you need to make FDCA first (because we make PEF via the polycondensation of FDCA and ethylene glycol).

Okay, so FDCA?

Avantium's process starts with the dehydration of fructose in an alcohol, which makes an alkoxymethyl furfural, and ends with the oxidation of that alkoxymethyl furfural, which makes FDCA. It's not exactly clear which furfural intermediate or CMF derivative Avantium and Origin's processes have in common, but there's at least enough crossover to justify a 100,000 ton per year FDCA plant.

Zooming out:

Origin signed a licensing agreement with Eastman to use Eastman's 5-(hydroxymethyl)furfural to FDCA technology back in 2017, and Avantium has the right to use Eastman's FDCA-related patent portfolio—so there's potentially some licensing crossover going on here that makes collaboration a no-brainer. For what it's worth, this is pretty normal in the chemical industry. Most operations are a combination of in-house and licensed processes.

Dallas-based chemical company, Celanese, is forming a new joint venture (JV) with Mitsui & Co and extending one of their existing JVs.

The new JV:

Celanese is carving out its food ingredients business (sorbic acid, potassium sorbate, and acesulfame potassium) and merging it with Mitsui's "long-standing positions in a variety of food supply chains across Asia and other regions" to form a 30/70 JV (with Celanese owning the smaller fraction). The main driver here is cash—Celanese's food ingredients business isn't core to its growth plans, and it accounts for just 2% of their annual profits, so they'd rather dilute their ownership in exchange for cash that can be allocated elsewhere.

Okay, and the JV extension?

Celanese and Mitsui & Co formed Fairway Methanol LLC in 2013 to build a $900 million 1.3 million ton per year methanol plant at Celanese's site in Clear Lake, Texas. The site, which started up in late 2015, makes methanol the normal way: by reacting the components of syngas (carbon monoxide and hydrogen). That's going to change later this year when they start utilizing CO2.

Looking forward:

The two companies decided to extend their existing JV terms for Fairway Methanol through 2045, which is effectively forever. This, of course, is rather meaningless: things could look a lot different in just 5 years if they can manage to hydrogenate CO2 instead of carbon monoxide (like what Sumitomo wants to strap onto its PDH technology).