Track 3 Session Details

​Tina Boville, CEO, Aralez Bio

Engineering Enzymes for Green Manufacturing of Noncanonical Amino Acids

Aralez Bio uses biocatalysis to unlock noncanonical amino acids. Using directed evolution—for which co-founder Frances Arnold won the Nobel Prize—we develop enzymes to synthesize new amino acids needed for innovations in pharmaceuticals, food, agriculture, and functional materials. Aralez Bio’s process is 10x simpler, 10x cheaper, 200x faster, and 50x greener than conventional approaches, paving the way to broad commercialization of new amino acids. These amino acids have the capability to replace petroleum-based raw materials and usher in an era of products built on unique, low-cost, green amino acids.

 

Cesar Granda, Chief Technology Officer, BioVeritas, LLC

The Quest for Natural and Renewable Chemicals: A Bio-Based Platform that Can Effectively Replace the Petrochemical Platform

The petrochemical platform enjoys many advantages that most renewable bioconversion processes do not. It consists of many stable, chemically malleable molecule intermediates of different carbon-chain lengths, which can be relatively inexpensively transported to a large, centralized refinery, thus attaining economies of scale, from which hundreds of products can be generated to cover a wide range of industrial and consumer-based applications. Most bioconversion processes in the renewable field tend to produce only one or two products or chemical intermediates that are difficult to upgrade. A robust bio-conversion process, which can inexpensively produce a wide range of chemically malleable intermediates, which can then be transported to a centralized bio-refinery, is necessary to effectively replace the petrochemical platform. Methane-arrested anaerobic digestion (MAAD) is an inexpensive robust microbial conversion process, which produces short- and medium-chain fatty acids ranging from 2- to 8-carbon in length (i.e, acetic through caprylic acids). As their petrochemical counterparts, these natural organic acids, which are valuable themselves in the acid or salt form, also enjoy a rich chemistry, which allows them to become building blocks in the manufacture of hundreds of useful chemicals. MAAD employs natural consortia of microorganisms that adapt very efficiently to most operating conditions and organic feedstocks and it requires no aseptic conditions, no GMOs, and no extraneous enzymes. As a result, MAAD is also the most inexpensive and globally replicable bio-conversion process. BioVeritas is commercializing a MAAD technology, which offers a real opportunity to become a true renewable chemical platform.

 

Dexter Hsu, General Manager, LCY Bioscience

Make Bioplastics an economical and sustainable solution towards net-zero carbon emissions by 2050

One-time-use plastics are destroying the environment at alarming rates. Bio-degradable plastics are considered to be a sustainable green solution to eliminate one-time-use plastic. This demand is the driving force behind increased growth for PBS, PLA and PBAT markets. Through policy change and social pressure, governments and corporate net-zero commitments are forcing petrochemical industries to cut emissions by 2050. This leads to a serious review of high-value chemicals used as feedstock to manufacture goods. According to the latest Bloomberg report, these productions are responsible for up to 2% of global emissions (equivalent to the aviation industry’s contributions). Research shows that bioplastics are definitely a possibility but constrained by the costs of bio-production and availability of biomass. Multiple pathways are identified for net-zero such as carbon capture/storage, electrification, and circular economics. Among them, bioplastics are currently the only commercialized net-zero route. The challenge for bioplastics is the overall cost. Improving technologies will reduce costs and policy makers applying carbon tax to petro-based products will close the gap. For mature bio-production such as bio-succinic-acid, economic scales become as important as a typical chicken-and-egg dilemma. Downstream users need bio-succinic acid to grow in scale in order to produce more efficiently and increase demand. With the ever-increasing demand of net-zero, customers are demanding derivatives of bio-succinic-acid such as Bio-BDO and THF. This will further expand the economic scale of bio-succinic-acid. It is an old topic but seems to be the driving force in the next chapter of bio-production.

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Andreas Kohl, CEO, Head of Business Development

VERBIO is providing biobased medium chain FA esters, alpha olefins and long chain diacid for the Chemical Industry by metathesis

Reacting to the growing market needs in the chemical industry for biobased, renewable and chemicals with a low CO2 footprint, VERBIO Vereinigte BioEnergie AG has developed a process and a unique new catalyst system to produce methyl-9-decenoate (9DAME), 1-decene and C18 diacids derivatives from renewable rapeseed methyl ester by olefin metathesis / ethenolysis, commercializing a new platform for renewable specialty chemicals. The new process VerBioChem, provides access to functionalized and unfunctionalized medium chain C10 alpha olefins in an environmentally friendly and economically attractive way from readily available renewable rapeseed methyl ester. Furthermore, the metathesis platform can be used to produce a number of useful C18 diacids e.g. Dimethyl-9-octadecenedioate (9ODDAME) or Dimethyl octadecanediaote by self-metathesis as new biobased building blocks for the chemical and especially the polymer industry. Verbio will construct a first-of-its-kind commercial scale ethenolysis and catalyst production plant in Germany and Hungary respectively. In a first step, Verbio will invest in a ethenolysis plant with a nominal capacity 50-60 ktpa of products. The investment will provide Verbio’s customers access to biobased specialty chemicals with a low CO2 footprint at commercial scale by 2024/25. The catalyst production plant of XiMo Hungary kft will have a capacity of 10-12 tpa and will provide access to Schrock type metathesis catalysts for Verbio as well as for external customers.

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Kelly Smith, Vice President of Research & Development, DMC Biotechnologies

Not Just Baby Formula: How New Biomanufacturing Technologies Can Make Our Food Supply Chains More Resilient

This year’s shortage of baby formula shed light on how monopolization, poor government oversight, fragile international supply chains, unexpected natural disasters, and political conflicts all threaten the security of our food supply. These same threats could result in the U.S. experiencing a shortage of the amino acids, vitamins, and other chemical compounds we use in animal feeds and human nutrition products. Biomanufacturing technology offers us the opportunity to lower the risk of such shortages by enabling us to cost-effectively localize and diversify the production of these chemicals. But until recently a scalable platform for cost-effectively on-shoring the biomanufacturing of a wide variety of chemicals has remained elusive. DMC Biotechnologies has launched an innovative new two-stage approach to biomanufacturing that allows businesses to cost-effectively, locally, and sustainably scale up production of bio-based chemicals. DMC’s platform is being used today to produce amino acids, sweeteners, and other products for the human nutrition market, and with scale can allow the U.S. to on-shore and diversify chemical production. As an added benefit, localized chemical production can help reduce the GHG emissions associated with shipping chemicals over long distances. This talk will further explore the risk that conventional chemical production poses to U.S. food security. It will also examine in detail how a more simplified approach to the engineering of biology allows us to transform how we produce chemicals. With this new approach, we can now rapidly, predictably, and robustly scale up the biomanufacturing of a wide variety of chemical products.