Bio-on ready to grant licenses of its glycerol-to-PHAs technology
Glycerol is an
important co-product of the biodiesel production process. In fact, it is
estimated that 90 m3 of biodiesel produced by transesterification
generate approximately 10 m3 of glycerol. The increasing production
of biodiesel throughout the last decades has led to a saturation of the
existing glycerol market and this product is present in large quantities around
the world. Its use as crude glycerol is problematic and over-production has
caused its value to slump. This fact has encouraged chemical producers to look
at technology for its conversion to chemical building blocks. Glycerol may be
used as raw material for the production of value-added products through
chemical, biochemical or thermochemical routes.
Fixing our
attention in the biochemical route, Bio-on has been searching
for a process using crude glycerol in the production of high-performing
polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs) biopolymers in the last few years. PHAs, a family
of biopolyesters with diverse structures, are completely synthesized by over
30% of soil-inhabiting bacteria from many carbon substrates including simple
sugars, free fatty acids, alkanes and triacylglycerols. Now, the company is
ready to grant licenses for the first PHAs bioplastic production plants using
biodiesel by-products. Bio-on technology enables production facilities
producing from 2,000 tons/year to 10,000 tons/year of PHAs.
Glycerol-based
process is added to the set of technologies developed by Bio-on that already
includes processes based on sugar beet, sugar cane and potatoes. According to
the press
release, Marco Astorri (Bio-on S.p.A. Chairman) stated about the technology:
“It is a great scientific and engineering achievement in the bioplastics world.
It shows that it is possible to transform a new waste product such as glycerol
into a raw material expanding concepts such as biodegradability and
ecosustainability with innovative advanced plastics.”
