Glob­al Bioen­er­gies: Suc­cess­ful first tri­al in its indus­tri­al pilot

Glob­al Bioen­er­gies since 2008 has been devel­op­ing a fer­ment­a­tion pro­cess that tar­gets gaseous isob­utene. After hav­ing com­pleted a first stage that led to the ini­tial proof of concept in 2009, the com­pany built a pro­to­type in 2010. An extens­ive cam­paign of tri­als in labor­at­ory-scale pilots of vari­ous sizes had then been con­duc­ted. The next fron­ti­er con­sisted in scal­ing up the pro­cess and adapt­ing it to an indus­tri­al envir­on­ment. To address this nov­el tech­nic­al chal­lenge Glob­al Bioen­er­gies had obtained a 4 mil­lion euro fin­an­cing from the French State in 2013 (“Inves­t­isse­ments d’Avenir” pro­gram). The first object­ive was to build a fer­menter of a new kind, adap­ted to the fer­ment­a­tion of gaseous hydro­car­bons. Fol­low­ing phases ded­ic­ated to engin­eer­ing and con­struc­tion, the fer­menter was installed in July 2014 at the heart of the Pomacle-Bazan­court indus­tri­al com­plex which brings togeth­er lead­ers in the field of agro-products con­ver­sion such as Cristal Uni­on. After a long phase of mech­an­ic­al and func­tion­al val­id­a­tions, Glob­al Bioen­er­gies’ chem­ic­al engin­eer­ing team decided that the required safety con­di­tions were met to carry out a first tri­al. It was per­formed at the very begin­ning of Novem­ber over three days. It is the very first time isob­utene is pro­duced by fer­ment­a­tion out­side of Glob­al Bioen­er­gies’ R&D labor­at­or­ies loc­ated in Evry near Par­is. This tri­al could rely on the unique expert­ise of the com­pany ARD (Agro-indus­trie Recherches et Dévelop­pe­ments) which is now in charge of the oper­a­tion of Glob­al Bioen­er­gies’ pilot, as part of an agree­ment signed recently. Phil­ippe Aubry, Deputy Gen­er­al Man­ager of ARD, com­ments: ​“Since its found­ing in 1989, ARD has estab­lished itself as a lead­er in the optim­iz­a­tion of innov­at­ive fer­ment­a­tion pro­cesses. We are proud to par­ti­cip­ate in the indus­tri­al­iz­a­tion of this break­through innov­a­tion. I thank ARD’s teams for all their hard work which has enabled this first isob­utene pro­duc­tion tri­al in indus­tri­al con­di­tions, and on sched­ule”. In the com­ing months, a new cam­paign of runs will be car­ried out. The object­ives are now the optim­iz­a­tion of the pro­cess and the pro­duc­tion of samples. These samples will then be shipped to vari­ous indus­tri­al­ists and in the first instance to Arkema and Audi with whom Glob­al Bioen­er­gies has signed col­lab­or­a­tion agree­ments. Rick Bock­rath, Vice Pres­id­ent for Chem­ic­al Engin­eer­ing at Glob­al Bioen­er­gies adds: ​“The fer­ment­a­tion of gaseous hydro­car­bons is a new fron­ti­er. We have taken a giant leap for­ward which will be fol­lowed with­in the next 18 months by the start-up of a second indus­tri­al pilot with a name­plate capa­city of 100 tons per year in Ger­many. We already con­tem­plate the com­mer­cial­iz­a­tion of full scale plants in the frame­work of indus­tri­al part­ner­ships with­in 3 to 4 years”. Marc Del­court, Chief Exec­ut­ive Officer of Glob­al Bioen­er­gies con­cludes: ​“The recent decrease in oil prices, a con­sequence of the tem­por­ary abund­ance of shale oil in the United States must not mask the under­ly­ing real­ity: the upcom­ing deple­tion of fossil resources will endanger the future of our civil­iz­a­tion. The time is near­ing when our bio-isob­utene pro­duc­tion pro­cess will appear as an import­ant piece of the puzzle of the upcom­ing ener­get­ic and chem­ic­al trans­ition”.

About GLOB­AL BIOENERGIES

Glob­al Bioen­er­gies is one of the few com­pan­ies world­wide, and the only one in Europe, that is devel­op­ing a pro­cess to con­vert renew­able resources into hydro­car­bons through fer­ment­a­tion. The Com­pany ini­tially focused its efforts on the pro­duc­tion of isob­utene, one of the most import­ant pet­ro­chem­ic­al build­ing blocks that can be con­ver­ted into fuels, plastics, organ­ic glass and elast­omers. Glob­al Bioen­er­gies con­tin­ues to improve the yield of its pro­cess and is now car­ry­ing out tests in its first indus­tri­al pilot. The com­pany recently rep­lic­ated this suc­cess to pro­pyl­ene and butadiene and is also look­ing to con­tin­ue with oth­er mem­bers of the gaseous olefins fam­ily, key molecules at the heart of pet­ro­chem­ic­al industry. Glob­al Bioen­er­gies is among the TOP 10 in the cat­egory pro­duc­tion of the GreenTec Awards 2015, Europe’s largest envir­on­ment­al and busi­ness prize. Help shape a green future and vote for our pro­ject on www​.greentec​-awards​.com from Novem­ber 6^th, 2014, till Janu­ary 11^th, 2015. Source: Glob­al Bioenergies