Bac­teria like the taste of syngas

For the first time, Evonik Indus­tries has man­aged to use biotech meth­ods to con­vert syn­gas to pure 2‑hydroxyisobutyric acid (2‑HIBA) under indus­tri­al con­di­tions. 2‑HIBA is a pre­curs­or used in the man­u­fac­ture of PLEXIGLAS®. Waste gas is one example of a source of syn­gas. ​“We have shown that there is a safe way of using bac­teria to turn syn­gas into a vari­ety of products in the future,” says Dr. Peter Nagler, Evonik’s Chief Innov­a­tion Officer. In addi­tion to 2‑HIBA for the plastics industry, oth­er products could include their deriv­at­ives for the cos­met­ics industry, or C4 alco­hols for the paints and var­nishes industry. Syn­gases are gas mix­tures con­sist­ing primar­ily of car­bon monox­ide or of car­bon diox­ide and hydro­gen. These gases can be gen­er­ated from muni­cip­al or agri­cul­tur­al waste, or from the waste gases pro­duced in indus­tries such as steel pro­duc­tion. Syn­gas has been used for syn­thes­iz­ing chem­ic­als for dec­ades. For the abil­ity to con­vert car­bon monox­ide, car­bon diox­ide, and hydro­gen into more valu­able molecules, Evonik looked to bac­teria from earth’s earli­est his­tory — to a time when oxy­gen was not yet present in earth’s atmo­sphere. Cer­tain microor­gan­isms today still con­tain the genet­ic inform­a­tion for these pro­cesses. Evonik has used their enzymes to cre­ate a cell fact­ory that gen­er­ates spe­cialty chem­ic­als from syn­gas. Evonik sci­ent­ists are now work­ing at top speed to optim­ize these ideas and devel­op them still fur­ther. ​“We have a long way to go before we can use bac­teria for con­vert­ing syn­gas to high-qual­ity spe­cialty chem­ic­als on a large indus­tri­al scale,” says Dr. Thomas Haas, head of Bio­tech­no­logy at Creav­is, Evonik’s stra­tegic innov­a­tion unit. ​“It will still take a couple of years until it is ready for the mar­ket.” Evonik views bio­tech­no­logy as a field with tre­mend­ous poten­tial for innov­a­tion. The spe­cialty chem­ic­als man­u­fac­turer is already using biotech meth­ods to pro­duce high-qual­ity products. These first-gen­er­a­tion indus­tri­al bio­tech­no­logy pro­cesses involve the use of plant oils, grains, and sug­ars as raw mater­i­als for fer­ment­a­tion. Evonik uses these mater­i­als to pro­duce amino acids and cos­met­ic ingredi­ents, among oth­er products. The first second-gen­er­a­tion bio­tech­no­logy plants are cur­rently under con­struc­tion, and these util­ize resid­ual plant mater­i­als from agri­cul­ture and forestry. Evonik is only pur­su­ing a few pro­jects in this area, and is instead focus­ing more of its atten­tion on third-gen­er­a­tion bio­tech­no­logy. As Haas explains, ​“We’re explor­ing third-gen­er­a­tion bio­tech­no­logy, because in addi­tion to sug­ar or resid­ual plant mater­i­als con­ver­ted to syn­gas, waste from oth­er sources such as muni­cip­al waste and indus­tri­al waste gas can also serve as raw mater­i­als. That makes us less depend­ent not only on fossil-based raw mater­i­als, but also on renew­able resources that could poten­tially com­pete with the food sup­ply.” 2‑HIBA can also be pro­duced via chem­ic­al syn­thes­is. Both the chem­ic­ally-pro­duced and biotech-pro­duced products can be con­ver­ted to methyl methac­rylate (MMA). MMA is used in paints, var­nishes, and anti-rust coat­ings, as well as in soft con­tact lenses and dent­al implants. Poly(methyl methac­rylate) (PLEXIGLAS®) is used for cre­at­ing sheets, pro­files, roofs, sound­proof walls, mol­ded com­pon­ents for auto­mot­ive engin­eer­ing applic­a­tions, and back­light units for illu­min­at­ing flat-screen mon­it­ors and tele­vi­sions. Evonik is one of the largest pro­du­cers of MMA. Fol­low­ing a res­ol­u­tion passed by the Ger­man Bundestag, this research is partly fun­ded by the Fed­er­al Min­istry of Food, Agri­cul­ture and Con­sumer Pro­tec­tion. Source: idw