Bio-on ready to grant licenses of its glycerol-to-PHAs technology

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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.”

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