US renewable petrochemicals producer Anellotech (Pearl River, New York; www.anellotech.com) has announced plans to make available kilogram-scale sample volumes of bio-based benzene, toluene and xylene for use by “strategic partners” in downstream development projects before the end of 2013. The company, which has developed a single-step thermochemical catalytic fast pyrolysis (CFP) process to manufacture aromatics such as benzene directly from non-food biomass, will start up a pilot plant late this year to produce the “green” aromatics as drop-in feedstock for a “variety of valuable derivatives.”

Depending on the price, plastics industry-demand for green alternatives could be strong. Fossil fuel-derived benzene, used to produce a number of polymers, including ABS, SBR, polyamide, polycarbonate and polystyrene, hit an all-time high this year. Pricing of toluene, used in polyurethanes, also has been volatile recently.

Anellotech’s CFP process, invented by university professor George Huber and colleagues at Amherst University in Massachusetts, enables non-edible renewable biomass to be processed in a fluidised bed reactor into aromatics, completing all chemical conversion steps in a single reactor. The catalyst is zeolite-based. The company’s first patent covering the process was awarded in October 2012, and it says “many more are in the pipeline.”