The Island of Misfit Materials

Blue Marble Biomaterials and Glycos Biotechnologies unlock high value trapped within unwanted, misfit waste streams

In the annual Christmas televised special Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, we meet King Moonracer, the winged-lion ruler of the Island of Misfit Toys, who flies around the world each night in search of unwanted dolls and Charlies-in-the-Box.

Is that not what the best of bio-entrepreneurs do? Bring unwanted, unloved, low-value feedstocks to the Island of Misfit Materials?

There, apply industrial fire and magic, in the form of microbial or thermochemical transformation. Unlocking high value for the investor, diverting one more waste material from the landfill, and taking us a step closer to the world beyond the barrel of oil?

The Digest had updates this week from two knights exemplar in the business of transforming low-cost, unwanted orphan feedstocks into high value biomaterials – GlycosBio and Blue Marble Biomaterials.

Blue Marble Biomaterials

Over at Blue Marble, think spent waste grains from the alcoholic beverage distillation process, and spent coffee grounds. Generally, these are materials that pile up in landfills.

By contrast, at Blue Marble’s first commercial facility, using these unloved, unwanted materials, they began running the fermenters at a 120,000 liter capacity facility last week, and are producing biocrude to be refined for use in bio-flavors and bio-cosmetic ingredients. Running in 4,000 liter batches on what is currently a ten-day fermentation cycle, they will ramp this up at their Missoula, Montana facility to a potential production volume of 200-250,000 liters. Customers are generally lined up for the product lines, and the company expects to be up to full production at the facility in 45 days.

“It’s a milestone in a five-year dream,” said Blue Marble’s CEO, Kelly Ogilvie, “the dream of a completely zero waste facility. Our by-products are a pelletized biomass, suitable for combustion in stoves or for bio-power, and potable water.”

For a couple of years we’ve been tracking the biomass developments up there in the Bitterroot Mountains – companies like Blue Marble and Rivertop Renewables, benefitting from a wide array of feedstock options and a highly supportive, motivated state and federal group of policymakers from Senators Tester and Baucus to Montana’s governor, Brian Schweitzer.

GlycosBio

Over in Washington, DC, GlycosBio CEO Rich Cilento was in town for the annual BIO Convention – and even amongst the hoopla generated by more than 15,000 attendees, the GlycosBio update was compelling.

For GlycosBio, think glycerin – the lower-value by-product of the biodiesel process. There’s a small market for glycerin as a building block material, but it has been overwhelmed by the supply coming from some biodiesel operators who have been producing a pure enough glycerine for sale into the industrial glycerin market – many biodiesel operators haven’t been ablr to produce it at sufficient purity and it has been distributed at very little value into the feed market, or even landfilled.

Along comes the GlycosBio fermentation magic. Using pathways engineered through non-pathogenic microorganisms, the company has developed microbial strains (primarily off the e.coli platform) that are very efficient in converting glycerin to chemicals like ethanol, succinic acid, propanediols, adipic acid, bioisoprene, acetates and lactates.

The news? The company is on-track to open its first commercial facility in Q4 2012, is interviewing EPC firms right now, and has assembled the funding for the project. With the global resurgence of biodiesel – driven, in particular, by the US advanced biofuels mandates.

The key here: most industrial biotech firms work with low-cost sugars, but GlycosBio looks for waste streams coming from the oilseed side, and in this case, think palm biodiesel waste. while Malaysia is full of oil palms, and is optimally suited to work with companies that can use palm oil waste streams. Glycos has engineered e.coli to convert glycerine or low-grade free fatty acids into acetone, technical-grade ethanol and bioisoprene.

It’s location? Malaysia, based on a deal signed last year between GlycosBio and Malaysian Bio-XCell, a government-supported industrial ecosystem focused on the advancement of biotechnology in Malaysia. They are collaborating on construction of GlycosBio’s biochemical plant and biotechnology research and development facility within the Bio-XCell industrial park in Malaysia.

The GlycosBio facility at BioXCell, which will have a 20 MT capacity at launch  – expandable to 90 MT, will form a hub of a 50-year project to transform the southern development corridor at Southern Industrial and Logistics Cluster (SiLC) in Nusajaya, Johor.

The financial rationale? According to CEO Rich Cilento, there’s a 45-55 percent gross margins from plant operations. That’s a big deal.

Leftover space in Malaysia – infrastructuire included, maybe some $$

Interestingly, GlycosBio itself has leftover room at its site, and is seeking a synergistic partner to take up some of that excess land capacity. At the site – infrastructure in place, some aggregated feedstock – and wait for it, GlycosBio’s investment backers may well take an interest in assisting with funding for a technology that goes after chemicals with proven markets that are off the GlycosBio radar for reasons of focus and bandwidth.

So there you have it – two sets of misfit materials – being converted from nuisance to high value, by magic bugs. Chalk up a victory for the Island of Misfit Materials – King Moonracer would be proud.