Food Packing Ingredient Bis-Phenol A, BPA, is on the Ropes.

BPA is found in canned beer. It is extracted
from the aluminum can's lining. 

Bis-phenol A, prominently used in beer cans and other food cans, continues to suffer bad health reports.   90% of the world's population has bis phenol A in their blood. Isn't that amazing?

It is increasing likely that this common, cheap, and durable chemical will soon be banned from food contact.

Circulation, the Heart Association Journal, published a report from a University of Exeter group showing that 756 people with coronary disease had relatively high BPA in their blood. High being 1.3 nanogram/milliliter in the blood. This result was significant at 97.3%. (It continues to amaze me how sensitive these tests are.)

When they controlled for all the standard cardiac risk factors, the trend was present at only 94.2%. Still convincing to me, but hard-core statistic geeks and their lawyers will disregard this result since it is less than 95%.

On the other hand, bis-phenol A compounds are pretty stable, and until now the most important medical effect was weak estrogen mimicking. (Meaning that it acted like estrogen in very high doses, causing early puberty in girls and low sperm counts.)

Bis phenol A is used in zillions of things, but most notably in the lining of food cans. Until recently it was used in clear re-usable plastic containers made from polycarbonate, but this has stopped in the US and Canada.  Here are three previous posts, click here and here and here on the estrogen effect.

More diabetes and liver enzyme changes were shown too, but the proof was not that strong.

The mode of action of the bis phenol A may be interaction with the BK ion channel, which transports potassium and calcium in smooth muscle cells; there is speculation about effects via the liver and via the aforementioned estrogen mimic effect.

So what does this mean? It probably means the packaging industry will be more motivated to convert to BPA-free alternatives to avoid crippling lawsuits.

Maybe you should start buying frozen vegetables instead of canned. Buying food in pouches instead of cans is a good idea too.

Buying beer in glass instead of cans is worth the added hassle.

Instant Genome Sequencing: Life Technologies New Sequencer

It can read your DNA in just 24 hours.

It seems like science fiction, but Life Technologies, has a table top sequencing machine for $100,000 to 150,000.  It does a whole human genome in a day.

Life Technologies sequencing chip. Note the tubes that deliver
reagents. 

The secret is a multi-parallel sequencing device. The press release text is pretty impenetrable, but they say it: "perform[s] direct, real-time measurement of the hydrogen ions produced during DNA replication. A high-density array of wells on the Ion semiconductor chips provides millions of individual reactors, and integrated fluidics allow reagents to flow over the sensor array.  This unique combination of fluidics, micromachining, and semiconductor technology enables the direct translation of genetic information (DNA) to digital information (DNA sequence), rapidly generating large quantities of high-quality data." Link

More recently Life Tech's archrival Illumina is suing them for patent enfringement on their analysis chip design.

Just eleven years ago, a collection of the scientists across the world worked to sequence the human genome the first time, and finished in 2003 after thirteen years. Just eight years later, we can do it in an day.

I remember how crazy it seemed when Star Trek NG's Dr Crusher put a few drops of blood in her "tricorder," and this little box sequenced it in a minute. Crazy because that would take a whole lab years, but now, it is not so crazy.

Renmatix Supercritical Water Process for Cellulose Degradation Gains Momentum

Renamtix, a small King of Prussia Pennsylvania company, is gaining support for its degradation process for wood byproducts into fermentable sugars. The process uses supercritcal water to soften the wood. The company claims the process is patented, but Renmatix has no patents under its name.

BASF invested $30 million in the company, which means their must be something substantive in Renmatix investor pitches. $20 million was contributed by other investors. The biomass-to-sugar proto-industry has contracted lately as new enzymatic process prove difficult to scale up, and syngas routes choke competing with natural gas.

Renmatix approach may show an economic advantage for non-enzymatic routes. Their route also supports the green chemistry principle of not destroying bonds in the feedstock unnecessarily, when they could be used in later step.

Renmatix has a pilot plant that consumes 3000 kg/day of wood fiber, but suspiciously Renmatix does not report how much "industrial sugar" the process can produce per day.  What is "industrial sugar" anyway?" I suppose it is an impure sugar mixture sufficient to support yeast or bacterial fermentation, but not clean enough for animal feed.

More on Bio-Succinic Acid

The news is that BASF and Purac are teaming up for a venture in succinic acid. Interestingly the process will absorb carbon dioxide, so it probably is an attempt to gain greenhouse gas credits as well.

Purac is a big lactic acid producer, and they have been working with BASF for two years.

Succinic acid could be a major building block for C-4 chemicals.

Bio-Succinic Acid

BioAmber plant in Pomacle France.

BioAmber has a biobased succinic acid plant in France with a capacity of 3,000,000 kg. Succinic acid is used to make polyester resins and as a raw material for further chemical manufacturing. They are planning to build a plant in North America of 20,000,000 kg capacity, probably near Minneapolis. They have plans for Brasil and Asia too.

These plants are making succinic acid with genetically engineered organisms. BioAmber uses an E. coli for fermentation, and has elaborate separation process to produce the pure succinic acid. As mentioned in other posts, the trick when making bio-acids is the separation from the other acids.

BioAmber claims that the process is economical when oil is as cheap as $40/barrel, but that is dubious since the price of fermentable sugar depends on the price of oil.

BioAmber won a 2011 Award from EPA for the technology.  BioAmber has agreements with Cargill, DuPont, Mitsubishi Chemical and Mitsui.

Thge company plans to make 1,4 butanediol from succinic acid. Using the diol and the diacid one could make a 100% biosourced polyester which would be desirable for specialty markets.

Bio-Succinic Acid

BioAmber plant in Pomacle France.

BioAmber has a biobased succinic acid plant in France witha capacity of 3,000,000 kg. Succinic acid is used to make polyester resins and as a raw material for further chemical manufacturing. They are planning to build a plant in North America of 20,000,000 kg capacity, probably near Minneapolis. They have plans for Brasil and Asia too.

These plants are making succinic acid with genetically engineered organisms. BioAmber uses an E. coli for fermentation, and has elaborate separation process to produce the pure succinic acid. As mentioned in other posts, the trick when making bio-acids is the separation from the other acids.

BioAmber claims that the process is economical when oil is as cheap as $40/barrel, but that is dubious since the price of fermentable sugar depends on the price of oi.

BioAmber won a 2011 Award from EPA for the technology.  BioAmber has agreements with Cargill, DuPont, Mitsubishi Chemical and Mitsui.

Thge company plans to make 1,4 butanediol from succinic acid. Using the diol and the diacid one could make a 100% biosourced polyester which would be desirable for specialty markets.

BioAcrylic Projects

The shortages in propylene and acrylic acid have kept BioAcrylic at top of mind. Let's get an update.

3-hydroxy propionic acid is easily
deydrated to make acrylic acid.

In addition to the OPX Biotechnology-Dow project that is at pilot scale, there are multiple industrial projects to make bioacrylics.  If you have not heard, OPX Biotechnology is looking to build a $35 million pilot plant for its fermentation based process to acrylic acid via the dehydration of 3-hydroxy propionic acid. Dow is jointly developing this, and OPX says they have a 3-5 year agreement with Dow. [See my previous post on OPX; see update from ICIS.]

OPX is looking to build a full scale plant in 2015.


All four projects go through the intermediate 3-hydroxy propionic acid. There are three other bioacylic projects according to OPX's Eggert, Cargill/Novozymes, Nippon Shokubai/Arkema, and Metabolix.

Cargill/Novozymes

The Cargill/Novozymes are licensing the DOE's technology using 3-hydroxypropionic acid, which is made from genetically engineered bacteria.

In bacterial processes, one should not underestimate the cost of separating the 3-hydroxy propionic acid from all the other acids present in a cell.

Novozymes in 2010 saw themselves growing to 18% market share in the US acrylic market, and are "planning" three plants.  Truthfully these are pretty vague plans so they may not happen.

Novozymes is claiming 48 hour growth cycles on the bacteria, 95% recovery of the 3-hydroxy propionic acid from the medium, and 98% yield on the dehydration of the hydroxy acid to acrylic acid.

Finally, Novozymes claims that their product is competes with US production with a petroleum price of $65/barrel. With oil at $100, it should be economical. Note that bioacrylics in Brasil is cheaper, and that is because the glycose is cheaper there.

Since acrylic acid can be made from petroleum or from glucose, this technology constitutes a way to tie the two markets together. Novozymes made this graph to show that. This uses acrylic production, but the larger volume ethanol production is the primary tie between the markets.




Nippon Shokubai/Arkema


In 2009, Nippon Shokubai had a lab scale process for dehydration of glycerin to acrolein, and had announced construction of a pilot scale plant. Acrolein is converted to acrylic acid by conventional oxidation, just as convention plants do today. The pilot plant was to cost $2 billion, and be funded by New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization or NEDO, and it is majority funded by the Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI.) There are no recent press reports on this.  Arkema licenses technology in the US, and they joint own plants; they appear to be putting in the technology to make glycerin from rapeseed oil.

Metabolix


Metabolix make polyhydroxyl alkanoates PHA today, and they claim that their technology is a superior way to make 3-hydroxy propionic acid. They propose to take the crude PHA and cleave and hydrate it in one step to make acrylic acid directly. An advantage of the PHA route is that the PHA is easily separated from the rest of the cell. In fact it is not really necessary to kill the cells to harvest the PHA plastic.  The yield may be 90% according to Metabolix.  See also.

Metabolix says that their process is economical with oil at $90-100/gal. They say they could make butane diol just as easily.

It will be interesting to see who commercializes what first.

There has been work at making acrylic acid from lactic acid, which is 2-hydroxy propionic acid. The problem with that is that it frequently decarboxylates to give acetaldehyde as a side product. There has been lots of work on catalysts and processes to keep that under control. One promising route uses nanoscale phosphated zeolites.