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The European Forum for Industrial Biotechnology event in
Edinburgh in October 2010 was buzzing with hope for the emerging
biobased chemicals sector, despite the perception that it was the
neglected stepchild of the biotech revolution whereby biofuels
commanded the larger share of attention from both the politicians
and investors. Progress in industrial biotechnology advanced the
introduction of metabolic engineering toolbox which promised, via
engineered microbes, the production of complex molecules that are
either currently very difficult, too expensive or simply too
expensive to process. Maive Rute, the then EU's Director of
Industrial Biotechnology, said at the event that the emerging
bioeconomy is set to worth € 2 trillion creating opportunities for
some 2 million people. Almost 10 years later, the bioeconomy has
not made the anticipated progress but rather faltered. The success
of this sector matters to the sugar industry largely because sugar
is the main feedstock in the production of a range of chemicals via
engineered microbes (see table). As such, it offers companies in
the industry a great opportunity to diversify, particularly since
the production of substitute petrochemicals from the sugar platform
represents a low volume high-value market. The French co-operative
Cristal Union and the Godavari Biorefineries have taken the plunge
with a foray into producing isobutene and a range of chemicals,
respectively.
Sugar derived chemicals
Methane
Glycerol
Fumaric acid
HMF
Formic acid
3-HPA
Malic acid
Citric acid
Ethanol
Propylene glycol
3-Hydroxybutyric acid
Gallic acid
Acetic acid
PDO
Acetoin
Ferullic acid
Glycolic acid
n-butanol
n-pentanol
Farnesene
Lactic acid
Isobutanol
Xylitol
Other isoprenoids
Malonic acid
BDO
Isoprene
Lipids
Propionic acid
Buta-1-3-diene
Xylonic acid
Fatty alcohols
Acetone
Butane-1,2,4-triol
Levulinic acid
Alkenes
n-propanol
Methacrylic acid
n-hexanol
Alakanes
Isopropanol
Isobutyric acid
Sorbitol
PHAs
Succinic acid
Butyric acid
Ascorbic acid
Isoprenoid alcohols
Glucaric acid
Glutamic acid
Muconic acid
Isoprenoid alkenes
Itaconic acid
2,5-furan dicarboxylic acid
3-hydroxy propionic acid
Aspartic acid
Source: E4Tech 2015
There are two compelling reasons why the many start-ups in the
biotech space have not succeeded. First is that beyond the proof of
concept in a laboratory, the journey to commercial scale has
produced many casualties as conversion technologies succumb in the
"valley of death". Indeed, more often than not, step-up in scale
involves necessary and significant changes in process technology.
Further, the changes have to be cost-effective too. In their recent
review, Kohli et al1 conclude that "Despite significant advances,
however, low yields, complex multistep synthesis processes,
difficulties in purification, high costs, and the deactivation of
catalysts are still hurdles for large-scale competitive
biorefineries". Underscoring this is the relative fragility of
microbes (bacteria and fungi) engineered to produce the desired
molecule. To put this into perspective, it is like agricultural
trials going from relatively controlled greenhouse to field. In the
latter, crops have to contend with weeds. The same is true for
commercial-scale operations in biorefineries where wild microbes
are a clear challenge and threat to a process.
With crude oil prices languishing at between US$50 and US$65 on
average over the last five years, the emerging industry has had a
hard time competing with the petrochemicals on a cost basis. Many
of the start-ups came on the scene when the crude oil price was
trading at US$100 or above when economics looked favourable. Alas
most of these have exited the market including OPXBio, Liquid
Light, Metabolix, Terracina (Solazyme), Plaxica, Segetis,
GlycosBio, Coskata, Virent, Cobalt Technologies, Greencol Taiwan,
TMO Renewables, Cereplast, Proterro, Mascoma, Zeachem and
Biomer.
Policy interventions have simply been not supportive enough to
prop up the bioeconomy sector. In the USA, federal agencies are
encouraged to purchase biobased products.
Is there an alternative strategy for the fledgling sector to
compete against the established petrochemical sector? In a seminal
paper, Clomurg et al2 suggests that the biobased sector jettison
from "the current model of industrial chemical manufacturing, which
employs large-scale megafacilities that benefit from economies of
unit scale" to one where "you can leverage an 'economies of unit
number' model, which can be defined as a shift from a small number
of high-capacity units or facilities to a large number of units or
facilities operating at a smaller scale. Through increasing the
number of units produced, this model can leverage cost reduction
through mass production in which costs decline as cumulative output
increases because of specialization in the production process and
improved process and product design".
References
Kirtika Kohli, Ravindra Prajapati and Brajendra K. Sharma
(2019) Bio-Based chemicals from renewable biomass for integrated
biorefineries. Energies 12, 233;
doi:10.3390/en12020233
James M. Clomburg, Anna M. Crumbley and Ramon Gonzalez (2017).
Industrial biomanufacturing: The future of chemical production.
Science, Vol. 355, Issue 6320, aag0804, DOI:
10.1126/science.aag0804