From The Observer, www.theobserver.ca
The head of KmX Corporation says the pilot plant it’s starting could lead to a commercial scale operation in Sarnia.
Isaac Gaon, chief executive officer of Oakville-based KmX, said the company began setting up a one-ton pilot plant more than a month ago at the University of Western Ontario Research Park in Sarnia.
“Hopefully, if everything goes successfully, we’ll be staying in Sarnia but will be moving to a much larger location,” he said.
The pilot plant is scheduled to be commissioned at the end of August and producing biobutanol by the middle or late September, Gaon said.
Biobutanol has many uses, he said, including the manufacturing of rubber and plastic.
He said the company uses a novel process to break out sugar from bio-mass. Then, it ferments it and uses a membrane technology to separate water from the valuable biobutanol molecules.
The membrane technology acts “as a kind of magnet to the molecules,” he said, “saving a huge amount of energy.”
Once the pilot plant can verify what the company has seen in its laboratory in Oakville, “we believe that we will then be able to go to a much, much higher scale,” Gaon said.
The Sarnia pilot plant will also demonstrate production of cellulosic ethanol.
“Using our process,” Gaon said, “we’ll be able to do it much cheaper, much more efficiently and with much less complexity.”
About eight summer students and five supervisors are working now at the pilot plant.
“Once we go to the higher industrial, commercial level plant, it will be 10 times that number or more,” Gaon said.
The testing scheduled for the pilot plant is expected to be completed in a year, he said.
Gaon said the research park is “a great facility” that is relatively close to the company’s head office in Oakville.
But, he added, the main reason for choosing the site is that KmX has been looking at companies in Sarnia-Lambton “we would like to associate ourselves, where we believe our technology will be of great value.”
Paul Paolatto, acting executive director of the research park, said KmX is “one of our first notable industrial commercialization projects and we’re very, very excited to have them as part of the park.”
He added KmX “is an example of a company that offers a promising technology and a promising market opportunity that could generate economic value and social value in Sarnia and around the globe.”
Paolatto said Woodland Biofuels also has begun installing its earlier announced cellulosic ethanol pilot plant at the park.
“We’ve also secured our first Western researcher who will be spending the next four years in Sarnia on an exciting bio-mass conversion project,” Paolatto said.
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