Global Bioenergies takes a major step towards scaling up its isobutene production process
Type of post: NEWS.
Global Bioenergies has taken a major step towards scaling up its isobutene bio-production process and is setting up a new supply chain to sell high value-added ingredients to cosmetics sector players from 2022.
Press release: “Global Bioenergies: production scale-up”, 17/05/2021.
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- “Global Bioenergies and IBN-One receive 3.1 M€ to move forward on its renewable isobutene plant project”, 07/10/2019.
Over the past few months, Global Bioenergies has developed a new version of its isobutene process, now comprising two consecutive stages. The first step covering the entire chain up until isobutene precursor can now be done using existing fermentation capacities in order to produce very large volumes. This improvement makes the manufacturing process more flexible and economically efficient. Only the second step, during which the precursor is converted into isobutene, needs to be carried out in a specific explosion-proof reactor (ATEX), such as those built by Global Bioenergies at its 500-litre pilot plant in Pomacle (France) and the 5 m3 fermenter at its demo plant in Leuna (Germany). This second step is extremely productive and requires only a small reaction volume compared to the first step.
A first full-scale test of the first stage has just been successfully completed at Pomacle in the 180 m3 industrial fermenter by ARD, Europe’s leading developer of fermentation processes and a longstanding subcontractor of Global Bioenergies. The second stage was also successfully tested at pilot scale. In the wake of this success, Global Bioenergies has decided to move key equipment from its Leuna plant to the ARD facility at Pomacle, including the 5 m3 fermenter which will be assigned to the second stage, in lockstep with the ARD large fermenter used for the first stage. This means the entire new process can be run on a large scale at optimised cost at a single location.
