Change of platform for this blog

Hi! This will be the last post on this blog on this platform. From today I'm transfering Chemicals and Innovation to a new site, under the slightly different name of ICIS Chemicals and Innovation, to reflect the fact this is part of the ICIS free online offering. You can see more of ICIS and its other blogs at www.icis.com

You can find me and all I've written so far at this address: http://www.icis.com/blogs/chemicals-innovation/. I hope you'll continue to follow the news and opinion on innovation in the chemical sector.

If you are interested, you can also follow the progress of the ICIS Innovation Awards 2011 at www.icis.com/awards. These were launched mid-April and the deadline for entries is 4 July.

Oxford Catalysts raises £21m

As the organiser of the ICIS Innovation Awards each year, it's always rewarding to see winning companies making progress with their innovations. This week, Oxford Catalysts, winner of the SME category in 2009 has raised a further £21m in funding to progress its innovative microreactor technology that can be used to convert biomass and biowaste into syngas ready for conversion into fuels and materials.

The microreactor is very compact

The technology is particularly appropriate as it enables the conversion to be carried out on a local scale, without transport of the biomass. It can also be used to convert stranded fossil fuels such as shale gas.

As the UK startup company says, "with moves towards development of vast shale gas reserves in North America, the increasing focus on the utilisation of stranded and associated gas and the growing interest in biomass-to- liquids (BTL) and waste-to-liquids (WTL) technology, the need to develop distributed technologies such as microchannel processing is more important than ever."  

Microchannel reactors – compact reactors that have channels with diameters in the millimetre range lie at the heart of microchannel processing technology because they intensify chemical reactors, enabling them to occur at rates 10 to 1000 times faster than in conventional systems. 

The Oxford Catalysts Group’s FT technology to produce biofuels has been demonstrated in Güssing, Austria since the summer of 2010 in partnership with SGC Energia, SGPS, S.A. (SGCE). In addition, the Group’s steam methane reforming (SMR) technology is due to be demonstrated in summer 2011 along with the Group’s FT technology in a six barrel per day integrated gas-to-liquids (GTL) pilot plant at a Petrobras refinery in Fortaleza, Brazil. 

The Group received its first order for a commercial scale FT microchannel reactor and highly active FT catalyst in December 2010. It expects that further commercial sales of its microchannel and catalyst technologies to multiple partners will follow in 2011.