Tag Archives: Melodea

US Dept. of Agriculture wants to commercialize cellulose nanomaterials

Lynn Bergeson in an April 7, 2014 posting on the Nanotechnology Now website announced an upcoming ‘nano commercialization’ workshop (Note: A link has been removed),

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI) will hold a May 20-21, 2014, workshop entitled “Cellulose Nanomaterial — A Path Towards Commercialization.” See http://www.nano.gov/ncworkshop The workshop is intended to bring together high level executives from government and multiple industrial sectors to identify pathways for the commercialization of cellulose nanomaterials and facilitate communication across industry sectors to determine common challenges.

You can find out more about the Cellulose Nanomaterial — A Path Towards Commercialization workshop here where you can also register and find an agenda, (Note: Links have been removed),

The primary goal of the workshop is to identify the critical information gaps and technical barriers in the commercialization of cellulose nanomaterials with expert input from user communities. The workshop also supports the announcement last December by USDA Secretary Thomas Vilsack regarding the formation of a public-private partnership between the USDA Forest Service and the U.S. Endowment for Forestry and Communities to rapidly advance the commercialization of cellulose nanomaterials. In addition, the workshop supports the goals of the NNI Sustainable Nanomanufacturing Signature Initiative/

The workshop is open to the public, after registration, on a first-come, first-served basis.

There is an invitation letter dated Feb. 7, 2014, which provides some additional detail,

The primary goals of the workshop are to identify critical information gaps and technical barriers in the commercialization of cellulose nanomaterials with expert input from user communities. We plan to use the outcome of the workshop to guide research planning in P3Nano and in the Federal Government.

The Cellulose Nanomaterial — A Path Towards Commercialization workshop agenda lists some interesting names. The names I’ve chosen from the list are the speakers from the corporate sectors, all eight of them with two being tentatively scheduled; there are 22 speakers listed in total at this time,

Tom Connelly – DuPont (Tentative)
Travis Earles, Technology Manager, Lockheed Martin
Beth Cormier, Vice President for R&D and Technology, SAPPI Paper
Ed Socci, Director of Beverage Packaging, PepsiCo Advanced Research
Mark Harmon, DuPont (tentative)
Kim Nelson, Vice President for Government Affairs, API
Jean Moreau, CEO, CelluForce
Yoram Shkedi, Melodea

For the most part the speakers will be academics or government bureaucrats and while the title is ‘cellulose nanomaterials’ the speaker list suggests the topic will be heavily weighted to CNC/NCC (cellulose nanocrystals, aka, nanocrystalline cellulose). Of course, I recognize the Canadian, Jean Moreau of CelluForce, a Canadian CNC production facility. I wonder if he will be discussing the stockpile, which was first mentioned here in my Oct. 3, 2013 posting,

I stumbled across an interesting little article on the Celluforce website about the current state of NCC (nanocrystalline cellulose aka CNC [cellulose nanocrystals]) production, Canada’s claim to fame in the nanocellulose world. From an August 2013 Natural Resources Canada, Canadian Forest Service, Spotlight series article,

The pilot plant, located at the Domtar pulp and paper mill in Windsor, Quebec, is a joint venture between Domtar and FPInnnovations called CelluForce. The plant, which began operations in January 2012, has since successfully demonstrated its capacity to produce NCC on a continuous basis, thus enabling a sufficient inventory of NCC to be collected for product development and testing. Operations at the pilot plant are temporarily on hold while CelluForce evaluates the potential markets for various NCC applications with its stockpiled material. [emphasis mine]

I also recognized Melodea which I mentioned here in an Oct. 31, 2013 posting titled: Israeli start-up Melodea and its nanocrystalline cellulose (NCC) projects.

A couple of final notes here, NCC (nanocrystalline cellulose) is also known as cellulose nanocrystals (CNC) and I believe the second term is becoming the more popular one to use. As for the final of these two notes, I had an illuminating conversation earlier this year (2014) about CNC and its accessibility. According to my source, there’s been a decision that only large industry players will get access to CNC for commercialization purposes. I can’t verify the veracity of the statement but over the last few years I’ve had a few individual entrepreneurs contact me with hopes that i could help them access the materials. All of them of them had tried the sources I was to suggest and not one had been successful. As well, I note the speaker list includes someone from PepsiCo, someone from Dupont, and someone from Lockheed Martin, all of which could be described as large industry players. (I’m not familiar with either API or SAPPI Paper so cannot offer any opinions as to their size or importance.) Melodea’s access is government-mandated due to research grants from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Program (FP7).

I’m not sure one can encourage innovation by restricting access to raw materials to large industry players or government-funded projects as one might be suspected from my back channel experience, the conversation as reported to me, and the speaker list for this workshop.

Alberta gave its cellulose nanocrystal (or nanocrystalline cellolose) production plant a soft launch in September 2013

It’s been a little over two years since Alberta’s proposed cellulose nanocrystal (CNC), then called nanocrystalline cellulose (NCC), pilot plant was first announced (my July 5, 2011 posting). I gather that the plant was quietly opened in Sept. 2013. Finding a news release about the event has proved to be a challenge. The Alberta Innovates website does not list it in its Newsroom while the Alberta Innovates Technology Futures website does list a news release (September 12, 2013Alberta’s one-of-a-kind CNC pilot plant commissioned: Cellulose-based ‘wonder material’ now available to researchers, industry partnersf), despite numerous efforts on my part (try it yourself), I’m unable to access it. Happily, I was able to track down some information elsewhere.

First (in the order in which I found the information), there’s an Oct. 2, 2013 news item on the WorkingForest.com website submitted by Pulp and Paper Canada),

Alberta’s cellulose nanocrystals (CNC) pilot plant, which produces up to 100 kilograms of CNC per week, was commissioned in early September at Alberta Innovates-Technology Futures’ (AITF) Mill Woods facility before a crowd of researchers, industry leaders and government representatives.

The $5.5-million pilot plant, created through a collaboration of the governments of Canada and Alberta in partnership with industry under the Western Economic Partnership Agreement (WEPA), uses wood and straw pulp from plants such as flax and hemp to create CNC for testing in commercial applications that will lead to production.

“Alberta Innovates-Technology Futures is proud to host and operate Western Canada’s only CNC pilot plant,” said Stephen Lougheed, AITF’s president and CEO. “We’re able to provide researchers with more CNC than ever before, thereby accelerating the development of commercial applications.”

The grand opening of the CNC pilot plant’s is planned for 2014.

Then, there was more information about the plant and the event in Catherine Griwkowsky’s Sept. 12, 2013 article for the Edmonton Sun,

A new cellulose nanocrystals (CNCs) pilot plant will take wood and agricultural fires and turn it into a form that can make products stronger, give them sunlight-absorbing properties, add a negative electromagnetic charge and more.

The $5.5-million project in Mill Woods will churn out up to 100 kilograms of the crystals each week.

Technical Lead Frank Tosto said researchers will study various properties of the crystals, and work with an internal team as well as external industry and other researchers to transform knowledge of the properties into ideas for applications. Later, the team may experiment with unconventional sources of cellulose.

The CNCs can be used for drilling fluids, paints, industrial coatings, automotive components, building materials, plastics and packaging.

The process [of refining hemp, etc.] breaks down cellulose into smaller building blocks using a chemical process of acid hydrolysis, that separates crystal formations in cellulose from other structures. The width is between five to 10 nanometres with a length of 150 to 200 nanometers. To scale, cellulose fibre would be the size of a hockey rink and the nano crystal would be like a pen or pencil, he explained.

Ultimately, Tosto hopes they will find commercial applications for the CNCs. The pilot should last five to seven years. He said it’s hard to think outside the box when they don’t know where all the boxes are.

I’d love to know if any of the entrepreneurs who contacted me privately about accessing CNC so they could develop new applications are now able to purchase product from the Alberta plant or from the one in Quebec (CelluForce), which had a stockpile last I heard (my Oct. 3, 2013 posting). It seems odd to be building another plant when the country’s first such plant has stopped production. Meanwhile, there’s some action on the international scene. An Israeli startup company, Melodea has developed its own CNC/NCC extraction process and has received money to develop applications, from my Oct. 31, 2013 posting),

Melodea Ltd. is developing an economic ally viable industrial process for the extraction of NCC from the sludge of the paper industry, a waste stream produced at millions of tons around the world. The core of the novel technology was developed by the lab of Professor Oded Shoseyov from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and was licensed exclusively to Melodea.

Moreover, the company develops unique technologies to self-assemble the NCC into ecologically friendly foams for industrial applications.

Melodea Ltd. announced today that it has been awarded above 1,000,000 Euro in 3 projects of the European Union Seventh Framework Program (FP7).

You’ll note Melodea’s process extracts CNC from the paper industry’s sludge which leads me to this question: will there be any discussion of this extracting CNC from sludge technique at the 2014 TAPPI (Technical Association for the Pulp, Paper, Packaging and Converting Industries) nanotechnology conference being held in Vancouver (Canada), June 23-26, 2014 (mentioned in my Nov. 14, 2013 posting about the conference’s submission deadline, Nov. 22, 2013)?

Israeli start-up Melodea and its nanocrystalline cellulose (NCC) projects

Three European nanocrystalline cellulose-oriented(NCC) research project grants have been awarded to Israeli start-up company, Melodea according to an Oct. 31, 2013 news item on Azonano,

Israeli startup Melodea Ltd., a leading provider of bio based Nano technology to produce foams from renewable resources, was granted 3 European research grants for 3 groundbreaking projects. Melodea’s technology is based on Nano Crystalline Cellulose (NCC), a primary building block of all living plants that was discovered years ago and was shown to be a most promising raw material for the development of high quality, economically attractive bio-based alternatives to fossil oil polymers.

The Oct. 2013 (?) Melodea news release, which originated the news item, provides more details about the company and the projects,

Melodea Ltd. is developing an economic ally viable industrial process for the extraction of NCC from the sludge of the paper industry, a waste stream produced at millions of tons around the world. The core of the novel technology was developed by the lab of Professor Oded Shoseyov from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and was licensed exclusively to Melodea.

Moreover, the company develops unique technologies to self-assemble the NCC into ecologically friendly foams for industrial applications.

Melodea Ltd. announced today that it has been awarded above 1,000,000 Euro in 3 projects of the European Union Seventh Framework Program (FP7).

The first project BRIMEE aims to develop insulating boards to attach to the exterior and interior of old buildings walls to improve insulation and reduce energy consumption.

Melodea’s ground breaking NCC foams will be the major constituent of such insulating boards.

The second project NCC-Foam aims to develop commercially-viable, lightweight, rigid foam core materials for sandwich structures for the composite industry.

Today, the common foams for composites are mostly manufactured from a variety of synthetic fossil-oil based polymers that have negative environmental effects compared to NCC based foam which is fully renewable produced from waste stream of the pulp and paper industry.

The third project FLHEA objective is to develop renewable and recyclable food packaging materials based on natural fibers such as flax and hemp. In FLHEA Melodea will produce flax based NCC that will be used as strengthening agent for the novel bio-based packaging materials.”

It is an outstanding achievement for Melodea to be awarded 3 European research grants with exciting European partners. These grants prove the EU commitment to support the development of Nano cellulose applications” said Melodea’s CEO Mr. Yoram Shkedi, “It will also allow Melodea to develop and to commercialize NanoCrystalline Cellulose (NCC) based applications for huge industries such as the construction, composites and food packaging industries”.

I notice they’re calling it nanocrystalline cellulose (NCC) not cellulose nanocrystals (CNC). I wish somebody would pick a name and stick with it as this extra keyboarding gets tiresome. Apparently, Canadians coined the term, NCC while the CNC term originated elsewhere (I don’t know where). Until now, it seemed CNC was becoming the preferred terminology.

If I’m interpreting this part of the news release correctly “… developing an economic ally viable industrial process for the extraction of NCC from the sludge of the paper industry”,, Melodea will either develop a production facility or be instrumental in its creation while working on projects that utilize NCC in industrial applications. All of which leads me to the Canadian stockpile of NCC. As of Aug. 2013, CelluForce, a Canadian NCC production facility, had ceased production due to its stockpile as noted in my Oct. 3, 2013 posting. Hopefully there will be news of some commercialization project(s) that require serious amounts of  NCC from CelluForce.

For those who like to dig deeper, I found websites for the three projects, BRIMEE, NCC Foam, and FLHEA, mentioned in the Melodea news release.