Origin Materials, a carbon negative materials company (earlier post), has begun startup of Origin 1, the first commercial CMF plant, located in Sarnia, Ontario, in-line with prior guidance. The plant represents a significant scale-up of Origin’s technology platform for converting sustainable wood residues into versatile intermediate chemicals.

The Origin platform converts C-6 cellulose into four isolated building-block chemicals in one chemo-catalytic step with almost zero carbon loss. The catalyst is 100% recovered; Origin does not rely on expensive sugars or fermentation.

The majority of output is the versatile furan CMF (chloromethylfurfural), plus HTC (hydrothermal carbon), an equally versatile resin,along with levulinic acid and furfural.

The new plant will supply industry with intermediate chemicals and materials that can be used across a wide range of end markets, including clothing, textiles, plastics, packaging, car parts, tires, carpeting, toys, fuels, and more with a ~$1 trillion addressable market.

CMF is a versatile chemical building-block that can be used to make numerous downstream products, including para-xylene, which is the precursor to PET plastic, and FDCA (furandicarboxylic acid), which can be used in numerous sustainable products and materials such as the next-gen polymer PEF (polyethylene furanoate).

CMF (Chloromethylfurfural)

The plant will also produce HTC, the applications of which include sustainable carbon black for automotive tires.

The commercialization of a molecule like CMF is historic, on the order of an ethylene. After working with CMF for over a decade at pilot scale, we couldn’t be more excited to begin commercial production here in Sarnia.

—John Bissell, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Origin Materials

Origin 1 will be operated to fulfill customer demand around qualification and sampling. The plant is expected to play a key role in the development of higher-value products and applications for CMF, HTC (hydrothermal carbon), and other co-products. These higher value products are expected to be produced and sold at world-scale from future plants, including Origin 2, Origin 3, and potentially licensed plants.