Glob­al Bioen­er­gies S.A.

Glob­al Bioen­er­gies is devel­op­ing arti­fi­cial path­ways to dir­ectly pro­duce light olefins through fer­ment­a­tion, as opposed to first pro­du­cing anoth­er product, e.g. an alco­hol (eth­an­ol, isobutan­ol, buta­ne­di­ol…) which then needs to be chem­ic­ally trans­formed (e.g. dehyd­ra­tion, meta­thes­is…). Dif­fer­ent from oth­er bio-products, light olefins are pro­duced as a gas. They hence do not accu­mu­late in the reac­tion medi­um to reach con­cen­tra­tions slow­ing down or inhib­it­ing the microor­gan­is­m’s pro­duc­tion. Fur­ther­more, product sep­ar­a­tion is con­sid­er­ably easi­er and cheap­er since no energy con­sum­ing meth­ods such as dis­til­la­tion or phase sep­ar­a­tion are neces­sary. In June 2011, Glob­al Bioen­er­gies has suc­cess­fully com­pleted a 2.9 times over­sub­scribed IPO and so far con­cluded two part­ner­ships with major indus­tri­al­ists. The com­pany’s most advanced pro­gram con­cerns the con­ver­sion of renew­able resources to Isob­utene, where proof of concept has been obtained in 2010. Isob­utene has numer­ous applic­a­tions — for fuels (IsoOctane, Jet Fuel, Dies­el) as well as for chem­ic­als (butyl-rub­ber, organ­ic glass [methyl methac­rylate, MIVIA], para-xylene, poly-lsobutylene). Glob­al Bioen­er­gies is now mov­ing its Isob­utene pro­cess towards indus­tri­al­iz­a­tion as well as work­ing on rep­lic­at­ing the Isob­utene suc­cess to oth­er light olefins such as Pro­pyl­ene, Butadiene, 1‑Butene, Ethyl­ene and Iso­prene. The com­pany’s busi­ness mod­el is based on grant­ing applic­a­tion-spe­cif­ic, exclus­ive licenses (e.g. ​“Isob­utene to syn­thes­ize MMA”).