I-Corps: Sustainable manufacturing of natural vanillin

从生物质生产高价值化学品是一个越来越感兴趣的领域，特别是在香料和香料行业，该行业对天然和可持续产品的需求日益增长。这个i-Corps团队已经开发了从非食用生物质中生产天然阿魏酸盐的工艺。天然阿魏酸盐对香料和香料行业非常重要，因为它被用来生产人们非常想要的天然香草。香草是香料香料行业中最重要的产品之一。全球香料和香料化学品市场是一个价值200亿美元的行业，年增长率持续保持在4.3%。目前，香草在这个产量为1.3万吨的全球市场中约占10亿美元。天然香草是市场的一个重要细分市场，占总销量的2400吨。这项技术的成功商业化将为国内从非食用型生物质来源生产可再生和可持续的天然香兰素提供一条途径。该团队开发了专有技术，将木材木质素选择性升级为用于香料和香料行业的高价值化学品。这项技术的一项新应用寻求从生物质中生产天然阿魏酸盐，同时通过i-Corps发现过程更好地了解客户的需求。这一发现过程的目的是验证这样一个假设，即从非食用生物质中生产的天然阿魏酸盐将是天然香兰素生产商所希望的一种有价值的产品。该项目的范围包括对相关行业联系人的100多次访谈，以验证这一假设。所采用的方法将侧重于与整个价值链的成员进行访谈，包括生物质供应商、阿魏酸盐和香兰素的生产商、香料和香料混合物和配方商以及分销商。随着项目在原型阶段的推进，这项发现工作将提供必要的数据和理解。原型规模将通过已经建造的内部反应堆的组合进行，并将利用Toll制造。原型规模扩大的数据将与i-Corps访谈产生的数据结合使用，以深入了解拟议进程的商业可行性，并为进一步扩大规模提出建议。

Production of high value chemicals from biomass is an area of increasing interest, especially in the Flavor and Fragrance industry where there is a growing demand for natural and sustainable products. This I-Corps team has developed processes to produce natural ferulate from non-food biomass. Natural ferulate is important to the Flavor and Fragrance Industry as it is used to produce the highly desired natural vanilla. Vanilla is one of the most important products sold in the Flavor and Fragrance Industry. The global flavor and fragrance chemicals market is a $20 billion industry with continuing annual growth rate of 4.3%. At the present time, vanilla represents around $1 billion of this global market with a 13,000 metric ton production volume. Naturally derived vanilla is an important segment of the market and constitutes 2,400 metric tons of this volume. Successful commercialization of this technology would provide a route for domestic production of renewable and sustainable natural vanillin from non-food biomass sources.This team has developed proprietary technologies for selective upgrading of wood lignin to high value chemicals used in the flavor and fragrance industries. A new application of this technology seeks to produce natural ferulate from biomass, while simultaneously working to better understand the customer needs through the I-Corps discovery process. The goal of the discovery process is to validate the hypothesis that natural ferulate produced from non-food biomass will be a valuable product desired by producers of natural vanillin. The scope of the project includes over 100 interviews with relevant industry contacts to test the hypothesis. Methods employed will focus on interviews with members of the entire value chain including; biomass suppliers, producers of ferulate and vanillin, flavor and fragrance compounders and formulators, and distributors. This discovery work will provide essential data and understanding as the project advances in the prototype stage. Prototype scale-up will be conducted through a combination of already constructed in-house reactors, and will also utilize toll manufacturing. Data from the prototype scale-up will be used in combination with the data generated through I-Corps interviews to provide great insight into the commercial viability of the proposed process and recommendations for further scaling.