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Isobutane Bioproduction - Global Bioénergies Steps Up Process Development

http://www.bulletins-electroniques.com/actualites/62528.htm

Founded in 2008 by Marc Delcourt and Philippe Marlière, Global Bioénergies (staff of about 15) is the only company in Europe and one of world's few to develop processes for producing hydrocarbons biologically. Under an exclusive license, the company is developing an innovative process of isobutane bioproduction based on an artificial metabolic pathway in a variety of microbes. It can be adapted for the conversion of various resources, i.e., sugar cane or sugar beet, glucose from cereal starch or sugars from the digestion of lignocellulosic material (agricultural or forest waste).

Isobutane is a gaseous hydrocarbon that spontaneously volatilizes during fermentation. This property makes it possible to overcome a common limitation of fermentation processes caused by cell toxicity of the end-product accumulating in the growth medium. It also does not require distillation or purification unlike ethanol. The advantages mean that costs and environmental impacts are much lower than current biofuel production approaches. Reliable and inexpensive chemical processes can be used to convert gaseous isobutane into liquid hydrocarbons (gasoline, kerosene, diesel and ETBE) and into diverse polymers (tires, organic glass and plastics).

Global Bioénergies, which closed its first financial round in 2009 and is currently organizing a new round to fund process industrialization, has just received 760,000 euros from OSEO, of which 100,000 euros from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), to accelerate research development. "We have recently demonstrated experimentally that the artificial metabolic pathway does actually generate isobutane. We are now focusing our efforts on enhancing the conversation rate," stated Global Bioénergies CEO Marc Delcourt. He then added, "OSEO funding will be used to speed up improvement of the metabolic pathway, a key step towards the industrialization of the bioprocess."

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Global Bioenergies - email: info@global-bioenergies.com - http://www.global-bioenergies.com

Code brève
ADIT : 62528

ADIT - Jean-François Desessard - email: jfd@adit.fr

eTech France numéro 238 (8/03/2010) - ADIT / ADIT - http://www.bulletins-electroniques.com/actualites/62528.htm