Canadian company announces CF Consortium membership
If you wondered about the national and international attention that the “Oak Ridge Carbon Fiber Composites Consortium” is bringing to the region, read the news release that a Vancouver, CA-based company posted last week on PR Newswire.
VANCOUVER – Lignol Energy Corporation (TSXV: LEC) a leading technology company in the advanced biofuels and renewable chemicals sector, today announced that it has become a member of the Oak Ridge Carbon Fiber Composites Consortium (“Consortium”). The Consortium is composed of some 40 organizations with a common interest in the development and commercial deployment of new carbon fiber and composite materials. Members include some of the world’s leading chemicals, materials and auto-manufacturing companies, as well as established carbon fiber manufacturers and several research institutes.
The Consortium (www.cfcomposites.org) is managed by Oak Ridge National Laboratory, (“ORNL”) which is the largest science and energy national laboratory in the US Department of Energy system. ORNL is engaged in a number of research and development initiatives in the carbon fiber space and will soon complete construction of the Carbon Fiber Technology Facility (“CFTC”), which will include a pilot plant capable of producing up to 25 tons per year of new carbon fiber materials from several different precursors, including lignin. Lignol recently attended the semi-annual meeting of the Consortium in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, which examined market development for carbon fiber composites and reviewed progress on the ORNL carbon fiber programs, including the CFTC.
“We are delighted to have been invited to join the Oak Ridge Carbon Fiber Composites Consortium and are truly impressed with the caliber and diversity of the membership that ORNL has attracted to the consortium,” said Lignol’s President and Chief Executive Officer, Ross MacLachlan. “The recent meeting was extremely valuable for us to make contact with players in this developing industry sector and to discuss our progress in Lignin-Carbon Fiber development with many of them. We were gratified with the depth of interest that we received in our HP-L™ lignin among members.”
Lignol is engaged in a wide range of application development projects incorporating its proprietary HP-L™ lignin into many core products of the chemical industry, such as coatings, resins, composite materials and thermoplastics. As well as developing some very promising applications, this work has resulted in a significant and robust intellectual property portfolio relating to composition of matter, structure and function of lignin, independent of the process used to produce it. One key area of development is the use of HP-L lignin as a raw material for carbon fiber manufacture, an application which shows great technical promise with large-scale commercial potential. The unique physical and chemical characteristics of HP-L lignin have proven advantageous in carbon fiber manufacture compared with many other lignins. Lignol has been working on Lignin-Carbon Fiber with a number of groups around the world, including universities, research institutes, such as ORNL, auto-makers and specialized materials manufacturers. Over a number of years Lignol has been supplying researchers with development samples of HP-L lignin and more recently, with tonnage quantities for larger scale production trials.
About Lignol
Lignol (TSXV: LEC) is a Canadian company undertaking the development of biorefining technologies for the production of advanced biofuels, including fuel-grade ethanol, and other renewable chemicals from non-food cellulosic biomass feedstocks. Lignol’s modified solvent based pre-treatment technology facilitates the rapid, high-yield conversion of cellulose to ethanol and the production of value-added biochemical co-products, including high purity HP-L™ lignins. HP-LTM lignin represents a new class of high purity lignin extractives (and their subsequent derivatives) which can be engineered to meet the chemical properties and functional requirements of a range of industrial applications that until now has not been possible with traditional lignin by-products generated from other processes. Lignol is executing on its development plan through strategic partnerships to further develop and integrate its core technologies on a commercial scale. Lignol also intends to invest in, or otherwise obtain, equity interests in energy related projects which have synergies with its biorefining technology. For more information please visit www.lignol.ca.
