Here’s the latest of Waste Management’s investments into turning its trash into treasure. The trash king said Thursday it had joined in a $22 million investment in startup Agilyx, which has developed technology that can turn plastic otherwise headed for the landfill, into a synthetic crude oil.
The Series B investment was led by Kleiner Perkins and joined by new investor, French oil giant Total, as well as previous investors Chrysalix Energy, Saffron Hill Ventures and Reference Capita. Agylix says it’s ready to scale up its patented technology, which has already churned out about 120,000 gallons of a crude oil-like substance from about 1 million pounds of shredded plastic at a Portland, Ore. pilot plant.
A 1,000-pound bag can yield about a gallon of the crude oil substitute, and Agylix says its system can process about 10 tons of plastic into about 2,400 gallons, or 60 barrels, per day. It uses an “anaerobic thermal reclamation process” — that is, heat in the absence of oxygen — to turn the plastic into a gas, which is then condensed into the crude oil product
That product, in turn, can be fed into existing refineries for conversion into a variety of fuels and products, the company says. That’s different from most biofuel startups, which seek to make liquids as close to fuel-ready as possible, though Texas startup KiOR is also working on creating bio-crude from plant waste like wood chips and straw.
Waste Management has been making a ton of green investments, with interests ranging from organic soil and compost makers to solar-powered trash compactors. But trash-to-energy and trash-to-chemicals technologies have been its primary focus, with investments in waste-to-ethanol startup Enerkem, and fermentation-based biofuel startup Terrabon.
Source: Gigacom.com
By Jeff St. John