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Lignol awarded more lignin patents

Lignol Energy Corporation, a technology company in the advanced biofuels and renewable chemicals sector, has expanded its intellectual property portfolio with new lignin patent awards.

Lignol Energy’s wholly owned subsidiary, Lignol Innovations Ltd., has received notice from the United States Patent and Trademark Office that it has recently issued a patent to LIL covering inventions made in the field of lignin composition of matter. This follows receipt of a recent patent issued in Canada covering similar claims related to the use of lignins in carbon fibre and brings to twelve the number of patents awarded to the company to date.

These two recently issued patents cover inventions associated with the chemical properties and functional attributes of a wide range of lignin derivatives, and provide significant barriers to other players wishing to enter the field, according to Lignol.

“When producing next generation biofuels from renewable, non-food feedstocks like wood chips, roughly 25% of the output is lignin. Companies can burn the lignin for its calorific value of approximately 5 cents a pound, or utilize Lignol’s technology to realize values of 50 cents to $2 per pound as a substitute for certain petroleum-based inputs in a variety of applications, such as resins, binders, coatings, carbon fibre and thermoplastics,” said Ross MacLachlan, president and CEO.

“Our high performance lignin is proving to be well suited for many of these applications. One of the strengths of our patents which cover lignin composition of matter is that they are applicable irrespective of the process used for lignin production – our own or a competitor’s. This creates commercial opportunities for Lignol not only from our own planned biorefineries, but also from licensing our technology to competitors and new entrants into the cellulosic ethanol and biorefining sector.”

Lignol Innovations undertakes the development of biorefining technologies for the production of advanced biofuels, including fuel-grade ethanol, and other renewable chemicals from nonfood cellulosic biomass feedstocks.