In two previous blogs, I wrote about using carbon dioxide, as a raw material for producing carbon-containing chemicals via chemical reactions (click here to read that blog) and about using biomass as a raw material in producing carbon-containing chemicals through fermentation processes (click here to read that blog). In this blog, I write about companies that use microorganisms and enzymes to produce carbon-containing, product-oriented chemicals. In all three blogs the essential message is to identify chemicals that are being made for use in large-scale products without using fossil fuels as a raw material to produce those chemicals.
The following table identifies seven companies that I could
find websites for that provide on the website the identify of a compound (or
compounds) that the company indicates it is producing by using engineered/modified
microorganisms and/or enzymes and non-fossil fuels raw materials.
|
chemical
produced |
what
company does |
|
|
genomatica |
1,4-butanediol,
1,3-butylene glycol |
develops microorganisms
for producing chemicals |
|
conagen |
amino
acids, lipids |
engineers microbes to
produce chemicals |
|
global
bioenergies |
isobutene |
develops enzymes for
producing chemicals |
|
dsm |
methane,
ethanol |
use of enzymes to convert
feedstock to biogas |
|
mango
materials |
polyhydroxyalkanoate
(pha) |
uses special bacteria to
produce polyhydroxyalkanoate (pha) from methane |
|
zymergen |
polyimide
film |
develops microorganisms
for producing chemicals |
|
evolva |
resveratrol,
nootkatone |
engineers microorganisms
for producing personal care, flavors, and fragrance products |
I identified several other companies that are pursuing synthetic
biology/microorganism, enzyme engineering technologies to produce chemicals from
non-fossil fuel starting materials, but none of them identify any chemicals that
they have produced.
Three of the companies in the table above (DSM, Zymergen,
and Evolva) are public companies (based on my research). DSM is a huge chemical/nutritional product company
and sales revenues generated from whatever chemicals they sell from enzyme/microorganism
production likely would not be provided in their public reporting. Zymergen’s sales revenues in 2019 and 2020 were
$15 million and $13 million, respectively and Evolva sales revenues in 2019 and
2020, $12 million and $9 million. A conclusion
from this data is that the amount of chemicals being made from synthetic biology/microorganism-enzyme
engineering is very small.
This blog and the two previous blogs (using carbon dioxide as
a raw material source and using biomass and fermentation processes) on producing chemicals
from non-fossil fuels sources suggest that replacing fossil fuels with other raw
materials for producing industrial-used chemicals are being actively pursued, but
still are developing businesses.
