Domestic Fuel

Novozymes has announced a new research agreement that will explore enzymatic technology to produce fuel ethanol, fine chemicals, and protein from seaweed.

The industrial biotech firm has entered into an agreement with India-based Sea6 Energy to jointly develop a process for the production of biofuels from seaweed. The research alliance will use enzymes to convert seaweed-based carbohydrates to sugar, which can then be fermented to produce ethanol for fuel, fine chemicals, proteins for food, and fertilizers for plants.

Novozymes will research, develop, and manufacture enzymes for the conversion process, while Sea6 Energy contributes its offshore seaweed cultivation technology. “Seaweed is a natural complement to our efforts to convert other types of biomass to fuel ethanol,” says Per Falholt, Executive Vice President and CSO of Novozymes. “More than half of the dry mass in seaweed is sugar, and the potential is therefore significant.”

Sea6 Energy is currently trialing its cultivation technology in partnership with a few fishing communities around the coastal areas of South India. Novozymes’ Indian arm will work closely with Sea6 Energy to develop the conversion technology.

Global chemical giant BASF has invested $30 million in a Pennsylvania-based company that has developed a process to produce cellulosic sugars for renewable chemicals and biofuels.

BASF, through subsidiary BASF Biorenewable Beteiligungs GmbH & Co. KG led a $50 million financing round in the technology firm Renmatix Inc.

Renmatix has developed the patented Plantrose™ platform whereby industrial sugar can be produced from lignocellulosic biomass (wood, cane trash or straw). In the Plantrose technology, biomass is split into cellulose and sugar in supercritical water at high temperature and pressure in a two-step process.

Industrial sugars are important renewable resources for the chemical industry and can be used, for example, to produce biofuels or basic chemical products and intermediates by fermentative processes. The availability of industrial sugars in sufficient quantities and at favorable cost is therefore important for the competitiveness of the products.

In a study released by Genencor during the BIO World Congress in Toronto, when U.S. consumers were asked to name a product they considered green, 39 percent of them named ethanol first and 31 percent of Canadian respondents also named ethanol as a green product. This is just one of results discovered in the Genencor Household Sustainability Index that researched the market potential for “green” household products with environmental benefits.

In addition, the study found that four in 10 American consumers and about a third of Canadian consumers have already heard the term “biobased” to describe various products including fuels such as ethanol and biodiesel, as well as cleaning and personal care products and clothing.

“I think very clearly that they know what a green product is, but haven’t yet made the link on how we’re going to make those products green and how important biobased products are going to be,” said Tjerk de Ruiter, CEO of Genencor.

“It was very interesting to see that ethanol was at the top of the list. Now of course we were very pleased with that because ethanol is such an important product and such an important marketplace for us,” said de Ruiter. “But it also shows that the consumer really starts to buy in to the concept of the importance of home produced fuels and really the contribution that ethanol is delivering to the economy.”

Listen to my interview with Tjerk de Ruiter here: Genencor Household Sustainability Index

I asked de Ruiter how biobased enzymes, such as their product, differed from what we’ve seen in the past. “When you work with a biobased organism, you can continuously improve. If we look at the enzyme systems we have today, they are a lot more efficient allowing you to extract a lot more alcohol, or ethanol, out of the product itself, and quite often at lower temperatures and in the process reducing energy use,” said de Ruiter.

Other products consumers found to be green were detergents, cosmetics and some clothing. The survey will be used to create a baseline to determine if “biobased” products become better understood, accepted and adopted by consumers. Click here to learn more.

Click here to see photos from the 2011 BIO World Congress.

Canada’s first lignin plant is operational and producing lignin for Canadian researchers according to an announcement made during the 2011 BIO World Congress. The plant is owned and operated by FPInnovations who is working in partnership with the Centre for Research and Innovation in the Bio-Economy (CRIBE), Natural Resources Canada (NRCAN) and AbitibiBowater. Lignin is a residual substance derived from the pulping process and in the biofuels process is broken down and converted into sugars, and ultimately biofuel.

The program partners are in the process of developing a black liquor and lignin evaluation centre in Thunder Bay, Ontario. At the core is the lignin demonstration plant that ties directly into the black liquor stream of AbitibiBowater’s Thunder Bay kraft pulp mill. When fully operational, this one of its kind demonstration plant will produce up to 100 kg of lignin per day, which will be shipped to a network of R&D labs across Canada that are developing novel uses for wood products. Also located in this facility is a lignin characterization lab.

Lakehead University and its Biorefining Research Initiative will be closely linked to the ongoing research and will be training students and postdoctoral fellows at the facility.

“It is with cutting‐edge technologies and strong partnerships such as this one that FPInnovations is contributing to building the future of forestry in Canada,” said Pierre Lapointe, President and Chief Executive Officer for FPInnovations. “The strong ties to Lakehead University are key to keeping technology and knowledge in the North. This only strengthens Lakehead’s Biorefining Research Initiative and other related science programs by creating linkages with labs across Canada.”

The is a huge potential market for lignin‐based products. It can be used as a green alternative to many petroleum‐derived substances, such as fuels, resins, rubber additives, thermoplastic blends, nutra‐ and pharmaceuticals, and more.

Doug Murray, General Manager of AbitibiBowater’s Thunder Bay Operations, added, “The lignin evaluation plant provides us an opportunity to move wood‐based products beyond traditional markets. We are pleased to have this innovative lab at our mill site and look forward to continued progress. We feel very fortunate to be part of this initiative.”

View pictures from the 2011 BIO World Congress in my flickr photo album.

Royal DSM used the 2011 BIO World Congress as a platform to announcement several new initiatives. Yesterday, DSM CEO Ferke Sijbesma received the George Washington Carver Award for Innovation in Industrial Biotechnology. In addition, the company was part of a funding round for Verdezyne. The latest news is that they have announced a partnership with French company Roquette Frères to build a commercial scale plant in Cassano Spinola, Italy for the production of bio-based succinic acid sourcing local biomass as their feedstocks. The bio-based chemical alternative can be used in a broad range of applications including packaging and footwear. The plant is expected to be online in the second half of 2012.

Succinic acid is a chemical building block used in the manufacture of polymers, resins, food and pharmaceuticals among other products. Bio-based succinic acid, a renewable and versatile chemical building block, is an alternative to petroleum-derived chemical building blocks such as adipic acid and 1.4-butanediol. DSM is able to produce the biochemical at a lower cost than the conventional fossil-fuel based chemical giving it an economic advantage in the marketplace.

Rob van Leen, Chief Innovation Officer of DSM, said, “The time is right to capitalize on the tremendous progress we have made together with Roquette in the last two years. Our proprietary yeast-based fermentation process not only allows cost effective production; it also eliminates salt waste and other by-products and thus improves the overall eco-footprint of end-products. This bio-based chemical building block is a substitute for various fossil feedstock derived monomers and proves that the bio-based economy is no longer a distant prospect.”

This announcement is the next in a series since the partnership began in 2008. In 2010 DSM and Roquette opened a demonstration plant in Lestrem (France), which has been running at full capacity. The two companies have also announced their intention to establish a joint venture, which will be carrying out business under the name Reverdia).

“We are very encouraged with the development efforts in several new applications and are receiving favorable feedback from customers who have sampled ton quantities from our demonstration plant in Lestrem. The new plant in Italy will allow customers in Europe, North America and Asia to make larger volume commitments to their customers,” added Jean-Bernard Leleu, Deputy CEO and RID Director of Roquette.

To view photos from the 2011 BIO World Congress visit my flickr photo album.

BP Alternative Energy Ventures and DSM Venturing B.V. have both invested in renewable fuel and chemical company Verdezyne. The two companies were part of a funding round that also included additional monies from existing investors OVP Venture Partners and Monitor Ventures. The announcement was made today during the BIO World Congress underway in Toronto.

“We are thrilled to have these two industry leaders validate Verdezyne’s technology and its business strategy by taking a stake in the company,” said E. William Radany, Verdezyne’s CEO and president. “This new funding, along with the support from existing investors, will enable the company to execute on its goal of creating and deploying first-in-class engineered yeast strains that efficiently produce biobased fuels and platform chemicals.”

According to Verdezyne, they have significantly advanced its robust yeast production platform for their ethanol and adipic acid processes. The additional financing will allow the company to continue to build its yeast metabolic engineering capabilities to produce a pipeline of renewable transportation fuels and platform chemicals.

DSM VP of Biobased Chemicals and Fuels, James Lademarco, added, “Over the past year, we have been impressed with Verdezyne’s progress in its yeast platform for both fuels and biobased chemicals. We see this investment as strategic given the complementary activities to our own portfolio within Biobased Products and Services.”

You can view photos of the 2011 BIO World Congress in my flickr photo album.

Royal DSM Ceo Feike Sijbesma has received the George Washington Carver Award for Innovation in Industrial Biotechnology during BIO World Congress. In its 4th year, Sijbesma is being honored as a visionary leader of the bio-economy, an industry that the World Economic Forum projects will contribute nearly $250 billion to the world economy by 2020. Under his leadership, DSM has made several instrumental contributions in the development of industrial biotechnology that includes biochemicals, biofuels, health and nutrition and supporting sustainable development.

Sijbesma believes that over the next 100 years, the world will be shifting away from the Fossil Age into the third Green Industrial Age, an age based on not taking from the land, from developing feed, fuel and fiber from the land in a sustainable manner.

“The so-called fossil-age will make a shift to the bio-based economy. In two or three centuries from now, people will look back on our civilization as a merely brief moment in history where we in a period of just about 250 years shifted our total economy to coal, oil and gas,” said Sijbesma during his acceptance speech. “To make the shift back to living with, and especially off, nature, we need to start this shift now. We are at a turning point towards a next green industrial revolution to secure our feed and fuel needs in the future.”

Listen to my interview with Feike Sijbesma here: The Next Green Industrial Revolution Begins with Biotech

Sijbesma believes biotechnology holds the key to our future and will provide solutions for energy and food.
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The World Congress on Industrial Biotechnology and Bioprocessing (BIO World Congress) kicked off this morning in Toronto, Canada with a bang. GreenField Ethanol, the largest producer of ethanol in Canada, announced the launch of G2 BioChem, a collaborative partnership that will validate and bring to commercialization GreenField’s innovative patented process technology. The partnership includes companies such as Novozymes and Andritz and the company has been given full support from a number of federal and Ontario programs including Sustainable Development Technology Canada (SDTC), Innovation Development Fund (IDF), Sustainable Chemistry Alliance (SCA) and Center for Research and Development in the Bio-economy (CRIBE).

“G2 BioChem’s technology is feedstock agnostic and optimizes next-generation ethanol yields using all available sugars,” began Barry Wortzman, President of G2 BioChem during the press conference. “Also, our process technology results in a low cost, per litre, which is essential to the viable commercialization of next generation ethanol.”

Listen to Barry Wortzman’s remarks during the press conference: Greenfield Ethanol Launches G2 BioChem

G2 BioChem’s research team has conducted thousands of trials and demonstrated success with various feedstocks including agricultural residues such as corn stover, corn cobs and bagasse as well as energy crops such as sorghum & miscanthus and woody biomass such as poplar.

“G2 BioChem’s advanced biofuels technology has the potential to fundamentally change the burgeoning renewable fuels and biochemical industries – while protecting our environment and boosting Ontario’s economy,” said Glen Murray, Minister, Ontario Research & Innovation. Ontario boosts the third largest biotech cluster in the world.

Listen to Glen Murray’s remarks during the press conference: Murray's Remarks during G2 BioChem Press Conference

The new collaboration was in part made possible from several industry partners including Novozymes. “As a collaborative partner, Novozymes’ goal is to enable and facilitate the realization of cellulosic ethanol production at commercial scale, as quickly as possible; and in our opinion, this technology is leading the way to accomplishing that objective,” said Cynthia Bryant, Global Business Development for Novozymes.

Listen to Cynthia Bryant’s remarks during the press conference: Bryant's Remarks during G2 BioChem Press Conference

Bertil Stromberg, VP, BioFuels for Andritz added, “Andritz is excited to be partnering on this initiative, and to contribute its expertise in process equipment technology for the commercial scale up of the process.”

Listen to Bertil Stromberg’s remarks during the press conference: Stromberg's Remarks during G2 BioChem Press Conference

Check back for audio from the announcement and click here to see photos from the 2011 BIO World Congress.

The World Congress on Industrial Biotechnology and Bioprocessing, hosted by BIO, is set to begin on Sunday, May 8, 2011 in Toronto. A record crowd is expected and the exhibitor hall is sold out. I’ll be on site to bring you breaking news and information about the latest biotechnology trends as they relate to biofuels and biochemicals. To get a preview of the conference, I spoke with Brent Erickson, executive vice president with BIO.

Erickson said that this conference is really dynamic on multiple levels. There are a series of plenary sessions as well as breakout sessions and workshops covering the gamut from advanced biofuels technology to algae and feedstock crops, as well as aviation fuels, renewable chemical platforms, and bi-based materials. Several events of special interest include the announcement of the George Washington Carver award and Greenfield Ethanol will be making an announcement about its cellulosic technology.

Listen to or download my interview with BIO’s Brent Erickson: BIO World Congress Preview

Two weeks ago, BIO released a white paper on policy and investments needed for the biotech industry. Erickson said these issues would be key during the World Congress. Government policy in the U.S. as well as Canada and globally will be entwined through many sessions. In addition, there will be a focus on the flow of venture capital and investment money into this space as Erickson said for many companies this is an important issue. He also said it is very heartening in this investment climate to see IPOs take place. The next IPO to take place is Solazyme.

I asked Erickson what companies or technologies he think will breakthrough over the next 6-18 months and he said what we’ll see are platforms breakthrough. He believes the biobutanol platform will take off as well as the succinic acid platform.

Be sure to follow conference conference right here beginning on Monday.

BioAmber Inc. has raised $45 million dollars in Series B financing with the monies used to accelerate the commercialization of succinic acid and modified PBS including the construction of a plant in North America. The round was led by NAXOS Capital Partners who helped to secure a new investor, Mitsui & Co. a Japanese trading company. The round was co-led by BioAmber’s largest shareholder, Sofinnova Partners, a leading European venture capital firm.

The money will also fund ongoing development work in the field of succinic acid. According to the company, this work includes work pertaining to the second generation organism being developed with Cargill, the technology licensed from DuPont that converts succinic acid to 1,4-butanediol (BDO), the novel purification process developed and scaled up with MATRIC, and the use of non-food feedstocks to produce biobased succinic acid.

“We were impressed by BioAmber’s management team, breadth of strategic partnerships and business model and we are very pleased to be the lead investor in this round,” said Carole Piwnica, Managing Partner of NAXOS and newly elected Vice-Chairman of BioAmber’s Board of Directors.

Jean-Francois Huc, CEO of BioAmber added, “We are proud to welcome NAXOS, which brings extensive industry experience, and Mitsui & Co., which has a global presence in biobased chemicals, and we are thankful for Sofinnova’s unwavering support. With our strong investor base and unrivaled partnerships, we are poised for rapid growth and long term market leadership.”

Dyadic Netherlands, a subsidiary of Dyadic International, a company developing enzyme and protein products for several industries including the biofuels industry, has announced that they have entered into a research agreement with Sanofi Pasteur, the vaccines division of sanofi-aventis Group, and EnGen Bio, Inc. As part of the agreement, Sanofi Pasteur will fund collaborative research at Dyadic Netherland’s research and development facility in Wageningen, The Netherlands, which will utilize Dyadic’s proprietary and patented C1 Platform Technology for certain vaccine applications.

Dyadic Netherland’s General Manager, Dr. ir. Wim van der Wilden will guide the research with collaboration from Dr. Mark Alfenito, the President and CEO of EnGen Bio, an early stage biopharmaceutical company based in Redwood City, California. The research is anticipated to be completed in six to twelve months. All other terms of the research collaboration are confidential.

Mark Emalfarb, President and CEO of Dyadic added, “We are very pleased to have the opportunity to work with Sanofi Pasteur and EnGen Bio to further demonstrate the utility of our C1 technology for certain vaccine applications.

President Obama is sticking to his guns in his support of biofuels, among other energy sources, as viable ways for America to reduce its dependence on foreign sources of oil. This morning, his administration released its plan for a comprehensive energy policy their report, “Blueprint For A Secure Energy Future.”

As a result of the report, the biofuel and biotech industries came out in support of the president’s commitment to biofuels.

Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) President and CEO Jim Greenwood thanked President Obama and his administration for its leadership in supporting the commercial development of biorefineries.

“Continued reliance on foreign petroleum threatens not only our economy, but also our energy and national security,” said Greenwood. “Next generation biorefineries utilizing renewable biomass to produce advanced biofuels, biobased products and renewable chemicals offer the potential to help stabilize energy prices and revitalize U.S. rural and manufacturing communities. The policies announced today by President Obama will provide important support to path-breaking biotechnology companies seeking to build commercial-scale cellulosic and advanced biorefineries.”

BIO’s Executive Vice President, Brent Erickson, added that to continue the momentum in the commercialization of biofuels, Congress and the country’s energy policy must enable federal agencies to serve as leaders in creating an open marketplace for biofuels to compete.

Also responding to the report was Brooke Coleman, the executive director of the Advanced Ethanol Council. Coleman reiterated that the biofuels industry is ready and waiting to assist the country in meeting its domestic energy needs and also called upon the administration to work with the industry to create a “responsible transition and transformation of current biofuel tax policy and investments in ethanol vehicle technology and fueling infrastructure.”

Coleman concluded, “Challenging capital markets, economic uncertainty, and uncertain federal policy have worked to slow the commercialization of promising advanced ethanol technologies. By committing to policies that accelerate the commercial production of ethanol from a wide range feedstocks, the nation can gain more control over its energy future. Ethanol production from wood wastes, grasses, municipal solid waste, and other non-traditional feedstocks will go a long way to making America truly independent of a need to import oil.”

Several chemists at the University of California, Berkeley have engineered bacteria for biofuels. More specifically, they have created bacteria that will churn out a gasoline-like biofuel at about 10 times the rate of competing microbes. The researchers believe this breakthrough could soon provide “green” gas. The research was published in the journal Nature Chemical Biology and authored by Assistant Professor of Chemistry at UC Berkeley Michelle C.Y. Chang along with graduate student Brooks B. Bond-Watts and recent grad Robert J. Bellerose.

The research was based on the bacteria Clostridium, where some of the species produce n-butanol, a drop-in fuel many companies are currently pursuing as a replacement for gas and diesel. Many researchers have genetically altered the bacteria to boost its ability to produce n-butanol while others have taken other routes such as plucking enzymes from the bacteria and inserted them into other microbes including E. coli. The results have only provided limited n-butanol production.

Chang and her colleagues emulated the same enzyme pathway into E. coli, but replaced two of the five enzymes with look-alikes from other organisms. This avoided one of the problems other researchers have had: n-butanol being converted back into its chemical precursors by the same enzymes that produce it.

The result was a new genetically altered E. coli strain that produced nearly five grams of n-buranol per liter, about the same as the native Clostridium and one-third the production of the best genetically altered Clostridium, but about 10 times better than current industrial microbe systems.

“We are in a host that is easier to work with, and we have a chance to make it even better,” Chang said. “We are reaching yields where, if we could make two to three times more, we could probably start to think about designing an industrial process around it. We were excited to break through the multi-gram barrier, which was challenging.”

According to an article from UC Berkeley, Chang is optimistic that by improving enzyme activity at a few other bottlenecks in the n-butanol synthesis pathway, in addition to optimizing the host microbe for production of n-butanol, she can boost production two to three times, enough to justify considering scaling up to an industrial process.

Last Saturday, most Americans took a moment to remember those lost on 9-11. I was at the Iowa versus Iowa State football game when more than 70,000 fans spent a moment in silence to honor those who died. During this time I reflected on things that our country can do to keep Americans safe and one such action is to reduce our purchase of foreign oil.

Corn farmers play a major role in helping America produce domestic, renewable fuels such as ethanol and I also spent last Saturday with more than 900 Iowa corn farmers, many who are growing corn for ethanol. The Iowa Corn Growers Association (ICGA) sponsored the game on Saturday as part of their mission to educate consumers about the role Iowa corn farmers play in producing their food and fuel.

ICGA CEO Craig Floss said that during the game, they were able to tell the story of how ethanol fits into the picture and what that means for Iowa corn farmers.

“There is no other liquid form of petroleum product like ethanol that can actually replace foreign produced oil. And the bulk of our oil comes from countries that have governments that are not like ours,” said Floss. He continued that everyone was touched by the event and has a connection to the event and we need to find a way to send less money to those countries. That is why we like corn farmers, explained Floss. They’re good for our economy and good for our security.

Floss concluded that corn farmers will continue to exceed global needs of corn and said that we haven’t even started to unlock the genetic code of what corn can do.

You can see pictures from game day in the Iowa Corn Fed Game Day photo album.

You can listen to my interview with Craig Floss here. Iowa Corn Farmers Will Reach New Heights

A company that breeds better seeds for biofuels has teamed up with a biotech company to sequence the jatropha genome … a plant touted as the possible future of biofuels feedstocks.

Officials at SG Biofuels have announced that they and Life Technologies Corporation have completed sequencing the Jatropha curcas genome to 100x coverage, using the SOLiD™ 4.0 System by Life Technologies:

The sequence significantly accelerates the identification of key traits for the oilseed-producing crop and advances its development as a high yielding, low-cost source for next generation biofuel.

Working in strategic alliance with Life Technologies, SG Biofuels will use the sequence to generate a high quality Jatropha reference genome. The genome will be compared to sequences generated from SG Biofuels’ germplasm library of more than 6,000 unique Jatropha genotypes – the largest and most diverse collection of Jatropha germplasm in the world – to identify molecular markers and trait genes to accelerate development of elite cultivars with vastly superior yields and profitability. This work will also advance the introduction of transgenic plants with further improved traits.

“The value of a Jatropha reference genome is enhanced significantly by having a diverse collection of plant material for comparison,” said Kirk Haney, President and Chief Executive Officer of SG Biofuels. “The sequence adds a powerful new tool to our development platform, allowing us to rapidly unlock the true potential of Jatropha as the most profitable and sustainable biofuel feedstock.”

“Working with SG Biofuels to sequence the Jatropha genome is an important part of our broader synthetic biology strategy to provide technologies for the development of next generation renewable energy,” said Wendy Jozsi, Director of Synthetic Biology at Life Technologies. “There is significant opportunity to use advanced molecular techniques in the optimization of plant-based biofuels, especially Jatropha, for increased yields and a faster development cycle, ultimately leading to new sources of energy.”

The non-edible jatropha is native to Central America and grown on marginal lands, providing a fuel source that does not compete with the food supply or the land to grow that food supply.