Global Bioenergies announces having succeeded in the production of bio-sourced butadiene by direct fermentation. It is the first time ever an entirely biological production process-i.e. without any chemical step-is reported for butadiene, one of the most important petrochemical building blocks.

Butadiene is a key platform molecule of the petrochemical industry with a world-wide market of over10 million metric tons per year. As of today, butadiene is exclusively obtained from fossil resources, principally through extraction from naphtha cracking. Given the decrease in naphtha
cracking capacities, there is a need for alternative routes to butadiene. In this context Global Bioenergies has signed in 2011 a collaboration agreement with Synthos (Warsaw Stockexchange: SNS), a leader in the production of butadiene-derived rubber products,to develop a direct fermentation route allowing a cost-effective transformation of renewable resources into butadiene. Since such a direct biological route does not exist in nature, Global Bioenergies first had to invent a new metabolic pathway comprised of a series of non-natural enzymatic reactions. This step was successfully achieved in December 2012.

The next step consisted in improving the activity of those enzymes and implementing them into a bacterial strain.Global Bioenergies announces having created such a proprietary production strain. This strain was placed in a lab-scale fermentation device, and upon the addition of glucose,the presence of butadiene in the off-gases was detected.This is the first time ever that the production of butadiene by direct fermentation from renewable resources has been reported.Chief Technology OfficerFrédéric Pâques comments: “We now have in our hands a prototype process for the direct biological conversion of renewable resources into butadiene. We expect that this butadiene programme will deploy in the next years as did our isobutene process, our most mature asset now operated in an industrial pilot. Direct fermentation of butadiene has major inherent advantages translating into better economics. We expect to demonstrate these in an industrial environment in the next few years.”

Jaroslaw Rogoza, R&D Director & Member of the Board at Synthos adds: “We have joined this programme in 2011 when it was still in the discovery stage and are very glad it has since then followed the planned trajectory. We consider that the programme is now significantly de-risked. We are looking forward to see how the programme will behave in the next phase, dedicated to the optimisation and scale-up of the process.”