DSM CLAIMS BREAKTHROUGH ON BIOFUELS
DSM, the Dutch chemicals company, is moving into the potentially huge market for second-generation biofuels, according to an article in the Financial Times. At this week’s world congress on industrial biotechnology in Washington, DSM will announce “a breakthrough in bioconversion.” This will improve the efficiency with which fuels can be made from “secondgeneration” sources – agricultural waste such as corn stalks and wheat straw, wood chips and energy crops grown on land that is unsuited to food production.
DSM’s second-generation technology has two components. The first is an enzyme, derived from a fungus discovered originally in a Swiss compost heap, which breaks down the cellulose in wood, plant stalks and other agricultural waste. This produces a range of sugars which are then converted by DSM’s “advanced yeast” strain into ethanol, the standard biofuel. Soaring energy prices, concerns about climate change, and escalating raw material costs have created a growing interest in “Industrial Biotechnology” - the use of living cells and their enzymes to create products from renewable resources. Development of conversion technologies for plant residues and ”lower value”, non-food / feed based feedstocks is currently a major focus for DSM R&D across multiple end product applications including advanced biofuels. Using feedstocks such as wheat straw, corn stover and so-called “energy crops” will enable the cost effective operation of future large scale integrated biorefineries. Such biorefineries will create the infrastructure necessary to meet the ever growing commercial demand for biofuels, bio-based chemicals and other bio-derived end products while increasing energy independence and reducing carbon emissions.
A report released this month by UBS Global Equity Research concluded that second-generation bioethanol would become the main renewable fuel for transport over the next decade, with a market valued at an estimated $80bn a year by 2022.
DSM’s new enzyme comes from a fungus that evolved to do this in the steamy environment of rotting compost; it works at temperatures as high as 65°C, adding to the efficiency of the conversion process. The second stage uses DSM’s “all you can eat” strain of yeast. It can make ethanol from sugars produced from second-generation biomass, such as xylose and arabinose, as well as the familiar glucose that is characteristic of first-generation feedstocks.
DSM concluded in 2008 a multimillion dollar cooperative funding agreement with the US Department of Energy to underwrite a portion of research and development costs aimed at enabling “second generation” biofuels from non-food feedstocks.
In February 2008, a consortium led by DSM that includes Abengoa Bioenergy New Technologies, Los Alamos National Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratory was awarded USD 7.4 million by the Department of Energy toward a proposed USD 33 million program to conduct cost effective enzyme development focused on finding applications in cellulose-based biorefineries for the production of advanced biofuels bio-based products. As part of its strategy to fully establish industrial biotechnology as an alternative to traditional petrochemical manufacturing, DSM has committed to funding the majority of the project costs and to creating new highly skilled “green collar” jobs at its Belvidere, NJ facility.
