Advanced BioFuels USA

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest) Biogas is an ancient thing, organisms have been making it for millenia – only in recent decades have we learned to capture and use it to generate on-site heat and power.

…

… This is the supply of methane as an intermediate feedstock for the production of complex and high value chemicals, fuels and foods. If 1G and 2G are all about methanogen organisms that consume waste and produce products, 3G is to a great extent about methanotrophs converting methane into higher value materials. Mango Materials focuses on plastics, Calysta on foods, T2C Energy uses a thermocatalytic process to make fuels. Industrial Microbes makes methanol and 3-hydroxypropionic acid amongst other designer molecules. We’d also mention the early stage T2C Energy coming along fast with drop-in fuels.

Here’s the latest from each.

Calysta

In June, reports arrived of commissioning and start-up activities have commenced at the world’s first industrial-scale FeedKind facility, to produce a new sustainable functional protein that does not use animal or plant ingredients in its production.

…

More From Less, Thanks to Fermenting Natural Gas: The Digest’s 2019 Multi-Slide Guide to Calysta’s Protein Ingredients

Industrial Microbes

Last July, we reported that the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced the selection of 6 projects totaling over $5 million to conduct research and development needed to accelerate the U.S. biomanufacturing sector. As part of the DOE Bioenergy Technologies Office (BETO) Agile BioFoundry (ABF) consortium, these projects will leverage national laboratory capabilities to address challenges in biomanufacturing. Among the projects, Industrial Microbes (Alameda, CA), will work on eliminating barriers to the use of gaseous feedstocks by creating a predictive model that identifies productivity improvements, forecasts performance, and enhances the robustness of gas fermentation processes.

…

Mango Materials

The company uses innovative manufacturing technology to turn methane from waste carbon emissions into biodegradable, biopolyester fibers.

In March we reported that In Washington, D.C., five trailblazing projects aiming to prevent the devastating impacts of microplastic pollution have won $525,000 as part of Conservation X Lab’s (CXL) Microfiber Innovation Challenge, including Mango Materials which turns methane from waste carbon emissions into biopolyester fibers. The winners beat competition from 19 countries for their solutions to prevent shedding of microfibers that are shed into water systems when synthetic fabrics are washed.

PHA Biopolymers: The Digest’s 2020 Multi-Slide Guide to Mango Materials

T2C Energy

We’ve called it the savior of fuels. The first heavy duty drop-in biofuel to break the $3/gallon level without subsidies

This summer, we reported a new technology arrivingin South Florida for the conversion of biogas to diesel fuels. If you thought of this as a biogas-to-paraffins technology, that would be fine, too. But it’s not strictly a methane-to-paraffins technology, because this technology from T2C also utilizes the CO2 stream found in biogas.

…

Enter T2C, which has licensed the TRIFTS technology from the University of South Florida and is now developing it. T2C describes it elegantly: The heavy equipment and waste hauling trucks can therefore unload and refuel at the same landfill or AD site with a renewable diesel fuel derived from the very waste they hauled. That’s circular scale, not just circular technology.

Less than $3/G, no subsidy, no kidding: The Digest’s 2022 Multi-Slide Guide to T2C Energy technology    READ MORE

The Digest’s 2023 Multi-Slide Guide to T2C Energy (Biofuels Digest)