Abengoa inks 36-month pact with Deinove as new industrial partner
In France, Deinove announced a 36-month collaboration agreement with Abengoa, with the support of Bpifrance, to develop at industrial scale DEINOVE’s consolidated bioprocess (CBP) using Deinococcus bacterium, to digest and convert agricultural residues to ethanol at a competitive cost. Performances obtained with substrates supplied to Deinove by Abengoa will be evaluated in order to set up a process that can be implemented, subject to adequate performance, in full-size factories.
Tereos has supported the DEINOL project since 2010 and is also a Deinove shareholder. Considering the development of food production at its BENP Lillebonne plant, Tereos waived its option on the DEINOL project. In agreement with Tereos and Bpifrance, Abengoa becomes the new industrial partner of the DEINOL project. DEINOVE believes it is capable of receiving licensing revenues as of 2016.
In January 2014 Deinove announced a 9% ethanol production, using Deinococcus bacteria, which demonstrates the technological and potential economic viability of its production process.
In 2010, the DEINOL project obtained a funding commitment from Oseo-ISI (now Bpifrance) for [Eur]8.9 million, including [Eur]6 million for Deinove. The company has already received [Eur]4m and achieved the first key milestones. The DEINOL consortium will receive additional funding from Bpifrance upon reaching successful milestones.
In a separate agreement, Deinove announced a 24-month collaborative R&D agreement with Suez Environnement Group, to explore the potential for transforming urban organic waste into
ethanol through the action of Deinococcus bacteria.
For 6 months already, Deinove has been working with Suez Environnement which has been providing various types of waste coming from its processing units. The results of this upstream research phase have confirmed that these substrates can be transformed into interesting molecules, in our case ethanol, by Deinococcus bacteria.
Consequently, the partners have decided to undertake a two-year collaborative research program, actually a true extension of the DEINOL program, which first phase will focus on optimizing the main stages
of the process’ development:
— Choice of substrates supplied by Suez Environnement and pretreatment conditions; Choice of a Deinococcus strain adapted to these substrates; Definition of the conditions for fermentative production in order to achieve a satisfactory ethanol production rate in 20-L bioreactors.
“With its amazing capacity for effectively degrading all types of biomass, Deinococcus creates value from waste that is little used today,” declared Emmanuel Petiot, CEO of Deinove. “In cooperation with Suez Environnement one of the world leaders in processing and recycling waste, we are expanding our potential markets and are contributing to the development of a real circular economy.”
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