nature@BIO 2007

Energy seems to be one of the major themes here at BIO: biofuels like biodiesel and ethanol from corn and cellulose.

I went to one very full session this morning about all the other industrial chemicals, beyond ethanol, that can be made from biological, renewable sources: propylene glycol (used in a wide range of foods, cosmetics and other products), acrylic acid (used in plastics manufacture), butanol (a potential fuel) and many others.

Cargill, the food and agriculture giant moving into doing more industrial chemicals, announced today that it, in collaboration with Ashland, a chemical and petroleum company, is building a new plant to produce propylene glycol from glycerin, a byproduct of biodiesel production. As more biodiesel is being made, the companies are expecting a glut of glyerin on the market. So it's interesting to see that as a few chemical companies slowly move towards nonpetroleum-based products, it's spawning the production of more chemicals from these "green" sources.

One French company, Metabolic Explorer, was making the case for butanol as a more efficient source of energy than ethanol that can replace diesel and be added to gasoline, though the cost is still too high.

One thing that wasn't discussed was the benefits of nonpetroleum sources for carbon emissions and climate change. Because in the end, that's what really matters, doesn't it?

My colleague Brady Huggett attended the same session and gave a business perspective (I think we posted at the same time!).

Posted by Cordelia Lok on May 08, 2007
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The public, investors and certainly the biotech industry are fully aware of biofuels, but what else is out there in industrial biotech? BIO scheduled a panel this morning -- it drew more than 200 people, by my estimate -- to discuss just that.

There's a lot, actually. There's the bioplastics market, for one -- Cargill is a leader there. (Producing bioplastics also would cut down on U.S. consumption of petroleum by reducing production of petroplastics, by the way.) There's syngas, and there's also butanol, which as a coating and solvent alone addresses a $3.3B market, although it has an upside of potential use as a biofuel.

As Philippe Guinot, vice president of business development at Metabolic Explorer pointed out at the panel, the chemical applications of industrial biotech address a market as large as ethanol. All of which helped his firm go public earlier this year, raising about €52 million (US$70 million) on Euronext. You can view the press release on the IPO here.

The question is how to get the word out? Without Bush mentioning bioplastics or syngas in a State of the Union address, the public hears industrial biotech and thinks just biofuels.

Posted by Brady Huggett on May 08, 2007
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