Company representatives from Applied Biorefinery Sciences (or AB Sciences) spoke to potential investors, professionals (accountants, attorneys, and investment bankers), academics, and to our students about their firm’s prospects, current investment need, and of their activity in Allegany County.
Move over, Petroleum. Biomass is about to eat your lunch.
Trees, corn, soy beans, sugar cane, switch grass and other plants are on their ways to replacing petroleum as the source of fuels and chemicals in the 21st Century.
What petroleum refineries were to the 20th and 21st centuries, bio-refineries will be to the 21st and 22nd centuries—the sources of valuable fuels and chemicals. But with a monumental difference—they won’t contribute to Climate Change.
Syracuse-based AB Sciences is an emerging leader in bio-refining. Eschewing enzymatic (bio-chemical) and gasification (thermos-chemical) processes that destroy or discard chemical intermediaries generally in favor of a single target product, the company creates multiple products. It starts with wood and produces a variety of high-value products. One is torrified wood—a superior fuel and chemically-modified wood fibers that perform better than wood in combustion, paper making and fiberboard manufacturing.
AB Sciences processes are patented and the company has received support from NYSERDA and NYS economic development grants to construct a demonstration biorefinery in the Adirondacks capable of processing three tons per pay of forest residuals, wringing every bit of economic value from that biomass.