Glob­al Bioen­er­gies Announces Break-Through in Dir­ect Bio­lo­gic­al Pro­duc­tion of Butadiene

Butadiene is a key plat­form molecule of the pet­ro­chem­ic­al industry with a world-wide mar­ket of over 10 mil­lion met­ric tons per year. As of today, butadiene is exclus­ively obtained from fossil resources, prin­cip­ally through extrac­tion from naph­tha crack­ing. Giv­en the decrease in naph­tha crack­ing capa­cit­ies, there is a need for altern­at­ive routes to butadiene. In this con­text Glob­al Bioen­er­gies (IBB net­work mem­ber) has signed in 2011 a col­lab­or­a­tion agree­ment with Syn­thos, a lead­er in the pro­duc­tion of butadiene-derived rub­ber products, to devel­op a dir­ect fer­ment­a­tion route allow­ing a cost-effect­ive trans­form­a­tion of renew­able resources into butadiene. Since such a dir­ect bio­lo­gic­al route does not exist in nature, Glob­al Bioen­er­gies first had to invent a new meta­bol­ic path­way com­prised of a series of non-nat­ur­al enzymat­ic reac­tions. This step was suc­cess­fully achieved in Decem­ber 2012. The next step con­sisted in improv­ing the activ­ity of those enzymes and imple­ment­ing them into a bac­teri­al strain. Last week, Glob­al Bioen­er­gies announced hav­ing cre­ated such a pro­pri­et­ary pro­duc­tion strain. This strain was placed in a lab-scale fer­ment­a­tion device, and upon the addi­tion of gluc­ose, the pres­ence of butadiene in the off-gases was detec­ted. This is the first time ever that the pro­duc­tion of butadiene by dir­ect fer­ment­a­tion from renew­able resources has been repor­ted. Chief Tech­no­logy Officer Frédéric Pâques com­ments: ​“We now have in our hands a pro­to­type pro­cess for the dir­ect bio­lo­gic­al con­ver­sion of renew­able resources into butadiene. We expect that this butadiene pro­gram will deploy in the next years as did our isob­utene pro­cess, our most mature asset now oper­ated in an indus­tri­al pilot. Dir­ect fer­ment­a­tion of butadiene has major inher­ent advant­ages trans­lat­ing into bet­ter eco­nom­ics. We expect to demon­strate these in an indus­tri­al envir­on­ment in the next few years.” Jarosław Rogoża, R&D Dir­ect­or & Mem­ber of the Board at Syn­thos adds: ​“We have joined this pro­gram in 2011 when it was still in the dis­cov­ery stage and are very glad it has since then fol­lowed the planned tra­ject­ory. We con­sider that the pro­gram is now sig­ni­fic­antly de-risked. We are look­ing for­ward to see how the pro­gram will behave in the next phase, ded­ic­ated to the optim­iz­a­tion and scale-up of the pro­cess.”

About GLOB­AL BIOENERGIES

Glob­al Bioen­er­gies is one of the few com­pan­ies world­wide, and the only one in Europe, that is devel­op­ing a pro­cess to con­vert renew­able resources into hydro­car­bons through fer­ment­a­tion. The Com­pany ini­tially focused its efforts on the pro­duc­tion of isob­utene, one of the most import­ant pet­ro­chem­ic­al build­ing blocks that can be con­ver­ted into fuels, plastics, organ­ic glass and elast­omers. Glob­al Bioen­er­gies con­tin­ues to improve the yield of its pro­cess which is now being tested in its first indus­tri­al pilot. The com­pany also rep­lic­ated its suc­cess in enzyme dis­cov­ery to pro­pyl­ene as well as butadiene and is look­ing to con­tin­ue with oth­er mem­bers of the gaseous olefins fam­ily, key molecules at the heart of pet­ro­chem­ic­al industry. Source: Glob­al Bioen­er­gies S.A.