While Myriant's initial commercial production of succinic acid and other specialty chemicals will rely on first generation fermentation technologies for conversion of biomass containing readily accessible sugars to high value products, we are leading the development of advanced methods that consume cellulosic biomass.

Lower cost cellulosic feedstocks such as bagasse, rice straw, wood chips and paper sludge - non-food plants and waste materials - contain sugars chemically bonded together into large polymeric units (cellulose and hemicellulose) and bound into the plant by other large molecules (lignin).

Myriant has developed core science and engineering competencies to support the development of robust, economically viable processes for the recovery of fermentable sugars from cellulosic feedstocks. Our significant proprietary improvements to the well known process of concentrated acid hydrolysis maximize the yield of five and six carbon sugars while lignin byproduct is collected and used for its thermal value.

Our proprietary microbial platform then converts the sugars to desired specialty chemicals such as organic acids (succicnic, malic, fumaric, etc.) and alcohols (3-hydroxy propanol, isobutanol, etc.) of high purity and in excellent yield.