SBIR-STTR Award

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project is the development of a new scalable manufacturing capability for producing bio-based chemicals for surfactants, lubricants, and polymers. This manufacturing platform will utilize biologically derived sugar carbon-source and transform this carbon to higher value products via microbial fermentation. At the core of this new manufacturing platform is a re-designed microorganism that will deliver homogeneous preparations of individual fatty acids of defined carbon-chain length that contain a single carbon-carbon double bond. This contrasts with current sources of oleochemicals, which are complex mixtures of fatty acids of different carbon chain lengths ranging between 12 and 18 carbon atoms, and may contain 0-3 carbon-carbon double bonds. The complex mixtures that occur in these oleochemicals limit the types of products that can be generated from fats and oils, or adds considerable separations cost to the manufacture of homogeneous products. The project will take advantage of unprecedented technological capability to produce homogeneous preparations of a single monounsaturated fatty acid, which is a platform feedstock for producing many chemicals that impact surfactant, lubricant, and polymer markets, currently valued at $40B per annum, and predicted to grow to $150B per annum in the next 5-years. This SBIR Phase I project proposes to develop new transformational technology that is based on the discovery and fundamental understanding of the biocatalytic mechanism that terminates the elongation cycle of Type II fatty acid synthase, the enzyme acyl-ACP thioesterase. The project will harness this technology for the production of near homogeneous preparations (~60%) of the monounsaturated fatty acid, 7-tetradecenoic acid, and proposes to optimize the system to produce over 80% homogeneous preparations of this fatty acid. This monounsaturated fatty acid is not currently available in the marketplace at a reasonable cost. The unprecedented availability of 7-tetradecenoic acid makes it a platform biochemical for subsequent chemical conversion to numerous biorenewable chemicals that have applications in surfactants, lubricants, and polymers. In the long-term, this platform technology can be expanded to produce alternative homogeneous preparations of monounsaturated fatty acids of different chain lengths, with carbon-carbon double bonds at different but defined places in the molecule.

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project is the development and scale-up of a manufacturing platform for producing bio-based chemicals for application in lubricants. This manufacturing platform will utilize biologically derived sugar carbon-source and transform this carbon to higher value products via microbial fermentation. In contrast to the complex mixture of fatty acids currently produced in the oleochemical industry, the technology developed in this project will deliver a product stream containing simpler mixtures of monounsaturated fatty acids, which will eliminate the costly separation cost and be directly used to synthesize cost-efficient high-performance lubricants. Due to the improved lubrication performance of these molecules, this technology will potentially increase the energy efficiency of industrial and transportation machinery. By utilizing biological carbon feedstocks and producing bio-degradable products, this technology has the potential to reduce the environment footprint of the lubricant industry. More beneficial impacts are anticipated as we expand the application of monounsaturated fatty acids into other industries, such as surfactants and polymers. A large commercial potential of this technology has been identified in the lubricant market, currently valued at $123B per annum, and predicted to grow to $178B per annum in the next 5-years. This SBIR Phase II project proposes to develop technology that will deliver novel bio-based monounsaturated fatty acids that provide new chemical structures allowing innovations in lubricants not possible from petroleum-based raw materials. Based on successful development of bacterial strains capable of producing enriched monounsaturated fatty acids in the Phase I project, the Phase II project will further de-risk the technology and scale up the capability to produce sufficient quantities of monounsaturated fatty acids to be evaluated by potential customers. By optimizing and scaling up the fermentation process and developing the product extraction procedure, large quantity of the first generation product (55% enriched monounsaturated fatty acids) will be produced. It will be used to chemically synthesize high-performance lubricants (i.e., polyol esters), whose physical-chemical and tribological properties will be evaluated and provided to potential customers. In this project, metabolic engineering, system biology, and evolutionary strategies will be applied to further improve the strains for producing second generation products that are more enriched in monounsaturated fatty acids (70-80%) and achieve commercial viable technology metrics. The monounsaturated fatty acids are envisioned as platform chemicals for subsequent chemical conversion to numerous specialty chemicals that have applications in additional markets, such as surfactants and polymers.