Jeffrey Dietrich: When I look at the bioeconomy and innovation
in the bioeconomy, I think it is a blend of old and new technologies.
So, there's nothing that we can do in the lab here that isn't fundamentally rooted in
chemical engineering approaches.
And that's a field that's been in existence for over a century, or at least a century.
But at the same time, we have this whole new suite of approaches and technologies associated
with genomics, metabolomics, proteomics, engineering microbes, and understanding what's going on
within the cell.
So, there is this blend of the old school chemical engineering, which really has to
do a lot with production of the compound, and then this very novel or forward-facing
perspective on how does one engineer microbes?
And then you add on top of that automation, and high-throughput screening, machine learning;
how do you understand all of this?
How do you take the best pieces of both worlds?
Eric Steen: It's an incredibly exciting time to be, really,
a company in the bioeconomy.
It's a convergence of a number of innovative bioeconomy technologies that are coming together
at once.
I think there are two impacts that we actually see directly for the Department of Energy
here, with Lygos' process for malonic acid.
So, one is that malonic acid in manufacturing processes can reduce energy costs of manufacturing.
This is in some of the big areas of auto manufacturing.
The second area where we're really making a positive impact on the bioeconomy is one
of our products comes off of malonic acid and requires ethanol.
So, in a sense we have demand for bioethanol as well, and our customers have a demand for
bioethanol.
And so, by combining our product in malonic acid, with existing technology for producing
ethanol, we're really able to effectively increase the value of what today is used as
a fuel, but what tomorrow could really show up in all consumer products, or a vast majority
of them in the future.
Delayne Johnson: In 2008, we were looking at forming some additional
products out of our facility.
So we formed an R&D facility and we hired a gentleman by the name of Travis Brotherson
to come run that facility for us.
And from that he actually invented the process that we now call, "Cellerate".
Travis Brotherson: The real start of the project was trying to
characterize how much starch was left after we had gone through our fermentations over
in the conventional side of the plant.
Initially the tests that I was running, I couldn't get as much sugar as I should have
to explain the amount of starch that the labs were telling us that we had.
I began to do some deeper research into cellulosic processes.
What I ended up coming up with was a Presto pressure cooker.
After we used the pressure cooker, we were actually beginning to see more sugar coming
out of this than what we could explain with the starch.
We got cellulosic enzymes, started to work with that, and begin to realize that we were
actually, in fact, converting cellulose.
Delayne Johnson: We've been very happy to successfully have
that operating for more than 2 1/2 years.
We've made somewhere between 5 1/2 and 6 million gallons of cellulosic ethanol, since July
1, 2014.
But just within the United States if existing ethanol facilities would adopt this technology
with the yeast and enzymes that are available today, we could actually generate 2 billion
gallons more ethanol out of the same bushels of corn that we're already processing.
At the same time we would be getting more corn oil that could be used for feed or for
energy, and we would be concentrating and making all of the protein more digestible.
So, we're really not just helping our own process by having the cellulosic ethanol being
produced here at Quad County.
We're helping all folks that are trying to do fermentations on C5 and C6 sugars.
Bryan Sherbacow: We identified a refinery that was in the asphalt
industry on the West Coast.
And why we were fortunate was, we were able to step in here and essentially keep in place
a tremendous workforce that had been here—many of the folks more than 20 years—operating
these units.
It's still hydroprocessing, and the core understanding and knowledge from the processing side, the
safety elements, the logistic side; we were able to save almost a hundred jobs here, retrain
and reengage, and redeploy them into a green economy.
When I think about, and now fully can appreciate the perspective of the skill sets of the folks
that we have here - I couldn't be more excited about it.
Glenn Clausen: We're using a renewable material.
Our chemistry is simplified as compared to conventional refining, because we're primarily
just dealing with a triglyceride as the feedstock.
When you look at the conventional product, right, it will have like a yellow tinge to
it or a color to it, whereas all of our products are very clear.
They have no contaminants in them.
Bryan Sherbacow: Today we're using primarily inedible agricultural
material, mostly animal fats, greases, and oils.
We have folks coming to us now on the cellulosic feedstock side, and I think that's by and
large today the most exciting opportunity that's presenting itself.
The next few years are gonna be, I believe, dominated by conversations, and hopefully
successe,s in what people are deeming a "green crude".
And we're already seeing that, and we're seeing opportunities to partner with those folks.
Taking true waste materials, whether it's municipal solid wastes, true wastes from the
food industry, or even woody biomass, which I think is extremely exciting, intermediate,
if not near-term opportunity.