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Corn-based acrylics plant leveling up in Illinois

The co-founder of Lakril (LOCK-rill) Technologies says the company’s bio-based acrylics could be a boon for corn farmers.

Chris Nicholas says they’ve developed a process to replace petroleum-based chemicals with a clean alternative.

“Taking bio-based sugars, corn here in the United States,” he says, “and converting that into a bio-based drop-in alternative that goes into today’s coatings, adhesives and super absorbent polymer markets that serve things like diapers.”

He tells Brownfield widespread adoption of the technology would lead to a new market for corn growers.

“Each individual plant would take about 3 million bushels of corn per year in order to produce 40,000 metric tons of this acrylic acid that drops into these coatings and adhesive formulations,” he says.

Nicholas says the company’s exposure in last year’s national Corn Value Chain Challenge has sped up the process of scaling up.

“That was pretty exciting for us because we closed on $3.2 million in financing from that seed round and that then gives us the runway and the funding in order to build out what is a kilogram scale pilot plant.”  He says, “That will allow us to get product out into the hands of our customers to show that this product functions in the exact same way as does today’s petrochemical acrylic acid.”

Nicholas says the company’s pilot plant, opening near Chicago this summer, will produce a kilogram of bio-based acrylics per day.  He says a full-size plant would be similar in scale to an ethanol plant and produce around 40 kilograms of clean acrylics per day.  

AUDIO: Chris Nicholas – Lakril Technologies