Wednesday, May 6, 2009 - 1:30 PM
11-02
Renewable Petroelum(TM) Products and Technologies: Engineering Microbial Fatty Acid Metabolism for Fuel and Chemical Production
S. del Cardayre, LS9, Inc, 100 Kimball Way, South San Francisco, CA 94080
The challenge to the biofuel industry is to quickly develop products and technologies that enable the rapid and widespread adoption of renewable and sustainable substitutes for existing fossil fuels and chemicals. Success will require products to be “drop in” replacements that leverage existing consumer and distribution infrastructure and for processes to be “feedstock agnostic,” scale without competing with food supplies, result in significant reduction in green house gas emissions, and most importantly be cost competitive with existing products. LS9, Inc. has developed a core technology to convert fermentable sugar to a diversity of fuel and chemical products in one-step fermentation processes. Our lead fuel product, UltraClean™ Diesel, is a secreted immiscible product that is recovered by simple centrifugation and is vehicle ready without further chemical processing, such as hydrogenation, cracking, or transesterification. Leveraging the efficient and productive fatty acid biosynthetic pathway in combination with an engineering strategy that places all chemical conversions in a single whole cell catalyst, LS9’s Microrefinery™ catalysts enable a specific and efficient route to a high-performing diesel substitute that is competitive with recent oil prices without subsidy. This talk shall discuss the fundamental technology and its application to a diversity of products, but shall focus on the quality, underlying economics, GREET analysis, pilot demonstration, and commercial development plan of UltraClean™ Diesel.
Web Page: www.ls9.com