Fracking, innovation, ethanol and Silly Putty

Ethanol from starch, and productivity

All of which brings us to a novel technology that was announced this week, relating back to making ethanol from starch. As we reported earlier this week in the Digest, Novozymes has come up with a cocktail of enzymes that drives up ethanol production 6%, brings down energy usage by 8%, and increases oil production by 13 percent.

For a standard 100 million gallon ethanol refinery — the result is the same amount of product with a big reduction in raw materials, and a boost of up to $5 million in annual profits. For a publicly traded entity with a 15X earnings stock multiple, that’s like adding $75 million to your market cap — giving you all kinds of new options to invest in technology and process improvement, make acquisitions, or simply return at a higher rate to shareholders.

In all, that’s a pretty good use for Putty. And, we think, much better than putting it in your mouth.

The technology of making waste into energy

In looking at Novozymes new enzyme technology — we also wanted to alert you to an interesting symbiosis that continues to grow between what is generally divided into separate realms known as “first-generation” and “second-generation” biofuels technology. Generally, second-generation tech is generally aimed at the conversion of waste materials and other sources of cellulose and hemicellulose into fuels — what are generally known as “cellulosic biofuels”.

Interestingly, one of these new enzymes in the cocktail, Spirizyme Achieve, is based on the substantial body of work that Novozymes science team has done in developing cellulosic enzymes, called cellulases.

“Achieve really allowed us to leverage the work done in second-generation and cellulosic,” noted Novozymes spokesman Jack Rogers. “With this product, we’ve selected some celluase action that improves fiber degradation – that opens up and makes the yeasts able to access more starch.”

In today’s coverage, we turn to the topics of”whiter whites and brighter brights”, fracking, feeding the world, and creating more energy for a globalizing economy – all via the page links below.