PureVision Completes Construction, Moves into New Research Lab
January 10, 2008PureVision Technology, Inc., developer of an advanced biomass fractionation technology for producing biofuels and other bio-based products, has completed construction of their new laboratory facility at their Fort Lupton headquarters. The new laboratory is situated within a 7,800-square-foot building and contains a biomass processing area, a wet laboratory, an office suite for the technical staff and a fabrication and metal shop. For the first time in its corporate history, PureVision has all technical, managerial and administrative operations centralized in one location. All of the company’s eleven employees work at the Fort Lupton facility.
Research, development and technology scale-up activities are taking place within the new custom laboratory that targets the conversion of abundant cellulosic biomass into lignin, sugars and cellulose fractions. These three fractions will become essential feedstocks to manufacture industrial products, fuels and energy in biorefineries. As of today, there are no industrial-scale cellulosic biorefineries built anywhere in the world. PureVision is one of the world’s leading technologies that provide this important fractionation or separation step needed to convert biomass into useful products.
PureVision has been developing its unique biomass conversion technology since 1999, known as biomass fractionation. The PureVision technology is now proven at a small scale to rapidly convert cellulosic biomass, including corn stalks, wheat straw and woody biomass into industrial raw materials for making many bio-based products. Unlike conventional corn-based technologies that produce ethanol, the PureVision technology can utilize cellulosic feedstocks for making many different products including pulps for manufacturing paper and apparel, biofuels including ethanol, butanol and jet fuel, bio-based plastics and a myriad of industrial chemicals.
PureVision’s corporate offices have been located in the Fort Lupton Industrial Center since 1996. Since 2003, PureVision technical staff has been operating a continuous, small-pilot reactor, which was situated at the Hazen Research, Inc. facility in Golden, Colorado. To consolidate its operations, PureVision moved all of its laboratory operations from Hazen during the last quarter of 2007. Today, the company is processing corn stalks and other types of biomass at the Fort Lupton facility. “We have completed moving our wet and dry labs for sample processing and compositional analysis from Golden to Fort Lupton. We are now building our laboratory capabilities for downstream solid-liquid and liquid-liquid separations, saccharification and fermentation, lignin chemistry, and pilot studies”, said Dr. Chim Y. Chin, Staff Scientist for PureVision.
PureVision’s headquarters and research facility is part of the 110,000-square-foot Fort Lupton Industrial Center, formerly the location of the original Fort Lupton Canning Company, which operated from 1897 through 1979. Purchased by PureVision’s President Ed Lehrburger in 1993, the 8-acre Industrial Center site is home to many other commercial enterprises including a mini-storage and warehousing business, a national wholesale distribution company, a faux stone façade manufacturing company, an industrial equipment distribution center, semi-tractor/trailer operators and businesses including electricians and carpenters. In 2005, Aims Community College moved their 10,000-square-foot Construction and Automotive Technology School into the Fort Lupton Industrial Center.
“For decades, the Canning Factory was the largest employer in Fort Lupton”, said PureVision’s president Ed Lehrburger. “Every year since 1993, we’ve seen additional businesses move into the Industrial Center, bringing the historical property back as a productive center for the area. The new PureVision laboratory complements the trend of recycling older warehouses and converting them into buildings where, now, cutting edge research and development is taking place.”
PureVision plans to commercialize its biorefining technology, first to convert agricultural residues such as corn stalks into ethanol, and once commercially operational, to apply the technology to other cellulosic feedstocks and industrial applications. The company is working with collaborators in the U.S., Canada, Europe and South America to finance, scale up and commercialize its patented technology.
For more information, contact:
Ed Lehrburger, President & CEO, PureVision Technology, Inc. (303) 857-4530
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