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Posts Tagged ‘Genomatica’

Taking the petro out of petrochemicals

Posted in green chemicals, green tech, tagged , on June 30, 2010| Leave a Comment »

photo: Genomatica

This post first appeared on Grist.

You can buy green jeans, green greens at the farmer’s market and green beer. But the reality is that many, if not most, products in our industrial society contain some petroleum-based chemicals.

In fact up to a quarter of oil consumption in some regions of the United States – such as on the Gulf Coast – goes for petrochemical production, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. A number of startups, however, are working on developing green chemicals that take the petro out of petrochemicals and eliminate the environmental and safety hazards from manufacturing industrial chemicals.

A couple of years ago I wrote about one of those companies, a San Diego startup called Genomatica, that had developed a green version of a chemical compound called 1,4‐butanediol, or BDO. Your skateboard wheels, sneakers, golf balls and host of other products are all made with the chemical, whose manufacture alone is a $3 billion business.

At the time, Genomatica, which was spun out of the University of California, San Diego, in 2000, had only produced batches of BDO in the lab. The startup’s scientists had bioengineered a microorganism that eats water and sugar and spits out BDO. Goodbye hydrocarbons, hello carbohydrates. The microorganisms are designed and tested “in-silico” – i.e., on computers, which also simulate chemical production.

Last year, the company, which is backed by top Silicon Valley venture capital firms Mohr Davidow Ventures and Draper Fisher Jurvetson, announced that it had also bioengineered a benign version of an industrial solvent called methyl ethyl ketone, or MEK. Better yet, Genomatica planned to produce MEK in shuttered ethanol plants.

On Tuesday, Genomatica executives said they had successfully moved from the lab to small-scale production, producing 3,000 liters of BDO in a pilot plant.

“By successfully implementing the manufacturing process at this scale, we have shown that our first product is ready for commercialization and that our platform delivers,” Mark Burk, Genomatica’s chief technology officer said in a statement.

The company claims its’s technology can cut chemical development costs and time by 50 percent to 75 percent.

Scaling up to industrial-scale production is another matter, of course. But if Genomatica and other green chemical startups succeed expect to see a lot more green products on the shelves in the coming years.

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Ethanol plants could produce “green chemicals”

Posted in green chemicals, green startups, green tech, tagged , , , on February 25, 2009| 10 Comments »

genomatica21

image: Genomatica

Talk about recycling: “Green chemicals” startup Genomatica on Wednesday said it has bioengineered a petroleum-free version of a widely used industrial solvent that can be produced in shuttered ethanol plants.

You’ve most likely never heard of the chemical, methyl ethyl ketone, or MEK, but it is used as a solvent in paint and other coatings. Genomatic says it has bioengineered a microbe that ingests sugar and water and produces MEK without the toxic byproducts and environmental risks that come from making petroleum-based industrial chemicals.

The San Diego company – backed by Silicon Valley venture capital firms Mohr Davidow Ventures and Draper Fisher Jurvetson – last year produced its first green chemical in the lab, 1,4‐butanediol, or BDO, which is a raw material found in everything from skateboard wheels to spandex. Genomatica plans to license its bio-chemicals to industrial producers.

When it came time to develop its next product, Genomatic CEO Christopher Gann says the company targeted a chemical that could be produced by existing industrial plants. “We said is it possible to shorten the development cycle by using existing assets,” Gann, a veteran of a veteran of Dow Chemical (DOW), told Green Wombat. “Can we develop a bioprocess for a chemical that would operate in the same conditions as corn ethanol.”

Why ethanol? The financial crisis has left a couple dozen ethanol plants idle. Gann and Genomatica president Christophe Schilling determined that existing ethanol plans could easily be repurposed to produce MEK. That’s potentially a win-win situation: Capital costs are kept to a minimum as new chemical factories don’t have to be built, while ethanol producers get a new lease on the life of their plants.

The food-versus-fuel controversy that has plagued corn ethanol producers is unlikely to pose a problem for Genomatica as the United States’ annual production of MEK is only about 57 million gallons (not 57,000 gallons as Green Wombat originally reported.), according to Gann. Still, it’s an attractively big market — about $2 billion, Gann estimates.

At least one ethanol producer, DAK Renewable Energy, has expressed interest in modifying some of its plants to make MEK, according to Genomatica.

So far, bio-MEK has only been produced in small batches in Genomatica’s lab. Meanwhile, Gann says the company is about to embark on a fundraising round to finance the construction of a demonstration plant in Southern California to produce BDO.

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Greening the petrochemical industry

Posted in climate change, corporate green, corporate sustainability, enviro capitalism, enviro startups, green startups, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on September 16, 2008| 2 Comments »

Illustration: Genomatica

Outside of ExxonMobil (XOM), petrochemical companies would seem to be the least likely to join the sustainability movement sweeping corporations worldwide. After all, how do you green an industry predicated on petroleum as a key ingredient?

The answer, according to San Diego startup Genomatica, is to replace hydrocarbons with carbohydrates. The company is announcing Tuesday that it has bioengineered a microorganism that ingests sugar and water to produce a chemical called 1,4‐butanediol. Commonly known as BDO, the chemical is a raw material found in everything from golf balls to skateboard wheels to spandex. Although Genomatica is planning a pipeline of bioengineered chemicals, BDO alone is a $4 billion business.

“By using carbohydrates versus hydrocarbons, we can produce BDO with less energy and that translates into a smaller carbon footprint,” Genomatica CEO Christopher Gann told Green Wombat.

So far, Genomatica – founded in 2000 and backed by marquee Silicon Valley venture capital firms Mohr Davidow Ventures and Draper Fisher Jurvetson – has only produced batches of BDO in the laboratory. But Gann,  a veteran of Dow Chemical (DOW), and company president Christophe Schilling claim that by the middle of 2009 they will be able to make bioengineered BDO cheaper than the petroleum-based chemical.

“This is a disruptive technology,” Gann says.

If Genomatica lives up to its claims of success in the lab, the technology indeed could potentially turn the petrochemical industry on its head.

First, anything that removes petroleum from a manufacturing process is going to get noticed. (While transportation accounts 70% of the 20.7 million barrels of oil consumed in the United States daily, a significant portion is used for chemicals  – up to 25% in the gulf states home to the nation’s petrochemical industry, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.)

Second, Genomatica’s microorganism leaves behind none of the nasty byproducts of petrochemical production, avoiding the health risks and costs of containing, storing and cleaning up toxic waste.

Lastly, Gann and Schilling say Genomatica’s technology frees BDO production from vast and accident-prone petrochemical complexes. “Since the raw materials are sugar and water, we can locate next to where there’s sugar and water or locate next to where the product can be consumed,” says Gann.

The startup was spun out of the University of California at San Diego, where Schilling and his mentor, Professor Bernhard Palsson, developed a technology platform to design virtual microorganisms. Schilling compares the process to the way airliners are designed entirely on computers.

“It allows us to model and simulate how microorganisms would survive and grow,” he says. “We can now go ahead and figure out the best way to engineer the organism to perform a particular task. We use off-the-shelf technologies and some proprietary ones to produce the organisms.”

Genomatica, which has raised $20 million from the Silicon Valley VCs as well as some Icelandic angel investors, will make money by licensing its technology to chemical companies. Gann and Schilling declined to identify other chemicals in their product pipeline but said they were related to the class of petrochemicals known as “cracker-plus-one.”

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