Glob­al Bioen­er­gies reports first isob­utene pro­duc­tion from waste biomass

As a first step in its pion­eer­ing jour­ney to man­u­fac­ture bio-sourced isob­utene, Glob­al Bioen­er­gies has been using first gen­er­a­tion feed­stock, such as wheat-derived gluc­ose, to set-up and optim­ize its bio-isob­utene pro­cess. How­ever, the pro­cess was designed to be ver­sat­ile in terms of feed­stock. With the right tech­nic­al adapt­a­tions, it would indeed be well suited to the usage of non-edible resources — widely defined as ​“second gen­er­a­tion” — such as wheat straw, corn stover, sug­ar cane bagasse or even wood chips. Vari­ous com­pan­ies are presently debot­tle­neck­ing the con­ver­sion of second gen­er­a­tion mater­i­als into fer­ment­able sug­ars. These tech­no­lo­gies have now matured to com­mer­cial scale, with five plants hav­ing star­ted oper­a­tions in the last 24 months. This industry ulti­mately has the poten­tial to provide fer­ment­a­tion pro­cesses with low-cost sug­ars derived from abund­ant resources. Glob­al Bioen­er­gies has recently estab­lished col­lab­or­a­tions with nine com­pan­ies from three con­tin­ents devel­op­ing the most prom­ising tech­no­lo­gies to con­vert vari­ous resources (straw, bagasse, wood.) into fer­ment­able sug­ars. Pre­lim­in­ary tests have res­ul­ted in suc­cess­ful second gen­er­a­tion isob­utene pro­duc­tion at the labor­at­ory scale, with pro­cess per­form­ances sim­il­ar to the ones observed using wheat-derived gluc­ose. Frédéric Pâques, Chief Oper­at­ing Officer at Glob­al Bioen­er­gies com­ments: ​“We have now demon­strated exper­i­ment­ally that our isob­utene pro­duc­tion pro­cess is com­pat­ible with a range of second gen­er­a­tion resources. Using impur­ity-con­tain­ing sug­ar solu­tions is usu­ally dif­fi­cult in clas­sic­al fer­ment­a­tion pro­cesses that lead to liquid com­pounds, because the accu­mu­la­tion of such impur­it­ies in the cul­ture broth makes puri­fy­ing the product more com­plex. Our pro­cess, which is based on the pro­duc­tion of a gaseous product, alle­vi­ates these issues and will allow us to use the cheapest types of feed­stock.” Thomas Buhl, Head of Busi­ness devel­op­ment at Glob­al Bioen­er­gies con­cludes: ​“Access­ing second gen­er­a­tion feed­stocks strengthens the stun­ning per­spect­ive of our isob­utene pro­cess to being massively used in the mid-term for the man­u­fac­tur­ing of trans­port­a­tion fuels such as gas­ol­ine and jet fuel.”

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 and recently announced suc­cess with first test­ing in its indus­tri­al pilot. The com­pany also rep­lic­ated its achieve­ment to pro­pyl­ene and butadiene two mem­bers of the gaseous olefins fam­ily, key molecules at the heart of pet­ro­chem­ic­al industry. Glob­al Bioen­er­gies is lis­ted on Altern­ext, Euronext Par­is (FR0011052257 — ALGBE). Source: Glob­al Bioen­er­gies S.A.