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Biorefining News & Trends
Genomatica’s Secret Sauce Every successful company has a “secret sauce,” and Genomatica, a California-based sustainable chemicals producer, certainly has one. By the company’s own accounts, it doesn’t make 1, 4 Butandiol (or BDO as its called) through costly brute force or trial-and-error techniques. “We’ve got a unique technology platform,” says Christophe Schilling, founder and CEO of Genomatica. “That has allowed us to come up with the best ways to produce many of the intermediate chemicals that are used for the core of the chemical industry.” And what is Genomatica’s approach to making biobased chemicals? The answer is computer modeling. Nearly all of the company’s early success has come via predictive computer modeling for living organisms and their respective metabolic rates. The computational approach “has allowed us to figure out all the ways we want to make the chemicals,” Schilling says, and for BDO, “we can figure out every way possible to turn sugar into BDO.” Today, the company is using a tried-and-true industrial organism, E.coli, and a readily available feedstock, dextrose from corn wet mills and sucrose from sugar mills, to produce what the company says is the first of many products. Don’t ex-
pect Genomatica’s predictive modeling approach to pump out any novel chemicals for new and future markets, however. Schilling says the company is focused only on the core chemical industry. “We think it is the perfect combination of volume in the market with margin,” he says. “We think that specialty chemiNeed to Guess Genomatica’s BDO is made from dextrose or sucrose, and cals are nice in terms of No a computer modeling system. greater dollar per pound, but the markets are relatively small.” From ethanol, a margin that makes up for the difSchilling’s standpoint, venture-capital-type re- ference in market size. That market opportuturns just can’t happen in those markets. And, nity doesn’t mean Schilling and his team aren’t on the other end of the spectrum is the enor- keeping an eye on the ethanol industry, espemous biofuels market, an “alluringly large mar- cially developments in cellulosic. Because the ket,” Schilling says, which requires massive pro- company is determined to take a feedstockductions levels in relatively thin margins. “We flexible approach, Schilling says Genomatica think the sweet spot is right in the middle.” is constantly monitoring progress in the field That rationale is based on two pounds— and looking for companies to partner with on from two pounds of sugar, Schilling says, a pretreatment technologies before it reaches person can make roughly the same amount of its ultimate goal, syngas utilization to produce both BDO and ethanol. BDO, he points out, sugars. —Luke Geiver sells for about two to four times as much as
Sustainable Packaging Practices Are Here There’s more to Bubble Wrap than popping, thanks to Ecospan Dextrose sugars from corn are helping computers, cameras and other sensitive equipment pieces get from point A to point B, and thanks to Ecospan, a biomaterial science and technology company that makes a number of bioplastics, moving from A to B has nothing to do with fuel. The California-based company produces smartcards, biobags, cups, and among others, new biopolymer-based packaging wrap. It all starts in Nebraska, at a 300 million pound biobased material production facility called 12 | Biorefining Magazine | february 2011
Natureworks LLC, an independent company owned by ag-giant, Cargill. “Ecospan is basepolymer-neutral,” the company says, “meaning that Ecospan is capable of using different base biopolymers for its value-added solutions.” But until other alternatives become available, the company says, Ecospan will continue using a Natureworks product called Ingeo. The corn-based Ingeo is made by fermenting dextrose with microorganisms that create lactic acid and then form long chain lactide mono-
mers. Through polymerization, the chains then form polylactide polymers, which are then pelletized. Ecospan combines the Ingeo product with other compostable materials, and through a series of common plastic-forming processes like calendaring and thermoforming, Ecospan then engineers a product that can help those sensitive packages go from one place to another, wrapped and protected in a sustainable way. —Luke Geiver
PHOTO: GENOMATICA
A predictive computer model gave Genomatica a process and clear plan