Biométhodes and OptaFuel regrouped to form Arbiom
A new actor
emerges in the biorefinery sector as a consequence of the reorganization of two
companies with expertise in the field of biomass processing: Virginia-based
OptaFuel US Inc and French-based Biométhodes. The unification was announced in
a press release on July 16 and confirmed in the World Congress on Industrial
Biotechnology (Montreal, July 19 – 22). Arbiom,
which is the name of the new company, is focused on developing technologies
enabling the sustainable use of non-food green biomass.
Arbiom’s biorefinery
platform converts non-food biomass (for instance, residues from agriculture and
forestry) into intermediates for the production of biofuels and green chemicals.
The new microorganisms used at the manufacturing of advanced biofuels or platform
chemicals (succinic acid, lactic acid,…) are highly sensitive to the quality of
their substrates and Arbiom's process deals with this issue providing sugars
compatible with these applications. It is a phosphoric acid process that uses
mild conditions to fractionate the lignocellulosic biomass in order to preserve
the chemical value of each of its fractions: C5/C6 sugars and lignin. Each one
of these streams can be used as building block and be further converted via
chemical or microbial conversion processes to biobased chemical intermediates
and end products. The technology has been successfully tested on hard and soft
wood, wheat and rapeseed straw, and bamboo, among others.
Figure 1.
Biorefinery concept and process of Arbiom (extracted from Arbiom website)
The company owns
three sites: Process Development and Pilot in Norton (VA, USA), Enzyme Development
in Evry (France) and Applications Platform in Raleigh (NC, USA). Arbiom is
currently structuring its first commercial projects in Europe and USA and
leverages its Application Platform to secure partnerships with biotechnology
and green chemicals companies and biomass producers and processors.