By harnessing the power of corn, one company’s highly innovative catalyst could revolutionize the petrochemical industry.
The clean-tech start-up Låkril Technologies is leveraging its catalyst to produce acrylic acid and acrylates from renewable feedstocks like corn rather than petroleum. The bio-based acrylic can serve as a drop-in replacement for petroleum-based acrylics.
More than 40 million metric tons of CO2 are emitted yearly in the production of petroleum-based acrylic acid and acrylates widely used to make latex paint, adhesives and industrial coatings.
Låkril’s bio-based acrylic is cost-competitive with petroleum-based acrylics and has the potential for industrial-level scale-up, said Co-Founder and President Christopher Nicholas, a Chain Reaction Innovations (CRI) Cohort 6 innovator. The two-year CRI entrepreneurship program embeds innovators in the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory to help them refine and de-risk their early-stage technologies.
“The petrochemical industry has been seeking a low-carbon alternative to petroleum acrylics for decades, but the economics never worked out because yields have not been high enough to offset the cost,” said Nicholas. “This is a market opportunity where a solution is desired but doesn’t exist today.”
Founded in 2021, the Chicago-based company is delivering impressive metrics. Låkril is the first company to reach the 90% yield of acrylics made from biobased feedstock. A conversion rate of less than 90% creates more cost and risk in producing bio-based acrylic acid vs. petroleum-based acids. The drop-in technology reduces CO2 emissions by more than 80%.
Låkril, which is partnering with corn growers primarily in the Midwest, plans to bring the innovation to market by 2025. Låkril will sell their catalyst and license processes utilizing their patent-pending technology.
Building a business
Nicholas, who has 15 years of experience developing and scaling catalysts at Honeywell UOP, co-founded Låkril with Professor Paul Dauenhauer, a chemical engineer and the Zsolt Rumy Innovation Chair at the University of Minnesota (UMN). Dauenhauer, Director of the UMN Center for Programmable Energy Catalysis, invented the revolutionary catalytic dehydration technology in his UMN laboratory.
Låkril, which exclusively licensed the technology from UMN, has developed a prototype extruded catalyst at its Chicago headquarters where the company is building a pilot plant. In 2022, Nicholas joined CRI with the goal of advancing the prototype toward commercialization.
Nicholas and Dauenhauer are working in the Argonne Lab with Meltem Urgun-Demirtas, who leads Bioprocesses and Reactive Separations in Argonne’s Applied Materials Division. Urgun-Demirtas is helping characterize and eliminate risk in the separations process and improve cost efficiency.
The CRI program has been invaluable to Låkril’s success, Nicholas said. “There is a community environment in the CRI program where we ask each other questions and work together on solutions,” Nicholas said. “That type of collaboration is extremely valuable for advancing our innovation and our business.”
How it Works
The process begins at milling facilities where corn-derived sugars are collected and used as feedstock for fermentation reactors. Fermentation produces lactic acid – a naturally occurring organic acid.
Låkril’s revolutionary heterogeneous catalyst converts lactic acid to a bio-based acrylic acid through a novel dehydration process.
The catalyst comprises a solid acid and amines, an organic compound derived from ammonia. The process uses the amine to control the dehydration of the lactic acid, which prevents side reactions that produce undesired byproducts. The process improves chemical purity, which is critical to industrial use.
The company’s process significantly lowers the cost of feedstock, reduces capital expenditures, cuts ongoing operating expenses and produces drop-in chemicals meeting current industrial purity standards.
Growing momentum, milestones
Through CRI, the Låkril team is gaining the entrepreneurial skills to develop a business strategy and position the company for success in the deep-tech market.
“CRI has contacts throughout the industry. We’ve learned most everything we need to know to run a successful business, from accounting and contracting to human resources and IP,” Nicholas said.
Long-term, Låkril’s impact could have a wide reach. Along with cutting CO2 emissions, Låkril could replace corn demand for ethanol in the U.S. which is the world’s largest corn producer at 14 billion bushels per year. Building facilities to produce bio-based acrylics will boost the economy and create high-paying jobs in rural locations.
While current production is in kilograms, by late 2025 Nicholas envisions a bio-based acrylic acid plant large enough to manufacture 40,000 metric tons of acrylics.
Låkril has generated significant funding including a recent $200,000 grant from the Minnesota Corn Growers Association. The Iowa Corn Growers Association led a pre-seed financing round with a $500,000 investment.
Other funding includes Small Business Innovation Research Program (SBIR) awards from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture, the National Science Foundation, and the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) of the Department of Energy.
