Bio-based terephthalic acid is becoming a commercial reality due to the support of brand-owners such as those of the Plant PET Technology Collaborative (Coke, Ford, Heinz, Nike, P&G) and PepsiCo announcing their goal for a 100% bio-based PET plastic. Micromidas is scaling up a chemical process to convert carbohydrate raw materials into the petrochemical precursor of terephthalic acid, with the goal of producing biobased p-xylene cost-competitively with the incumbent petroleum-based p-xylene. The process is feedstock agnostic, being capable of converting raw materials such as agricultural residues (corn stover and sugar beet residues), wood residues, glucose, sucrose and starch. It uses hydrochloric acid to simultaneously saccharify and dehydrate pentoses to furfural and hexoses to 5-chloromethylfurfural (CMF). These compounds are then reduced to 2-methylfuran (MF) and 2,5-dimethylfuran (DMF), respectively, which are then converted to toluene and p-xylene by a Diels-Alder [4+2] cycloaddition with ethylene. The Micromidas process gives industry-leading yields throughout and has demonstrated that the p-xylene produced from this process meets the same quality specifications for terephthalic acid production as petrochemical p-xylene.

Bio-based sources for p-xylene

253rd National Meeting (2017)

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