Amyris Opens First Pilot Plant for Renewable Diesel Fuel
12 November 2008
Amyris Biotechnologies, Inc. has opened its first pilot plant producing renewable diesel fuel, which it brands “No Compromise”. Amyris engineers new metabolic pathways in industrial microbes (bacteria or yeast) to produce a large range of molecules (isoprenoids) used in energy, pharmaceutical, and chemical applications via fermentation of sugar from plant-based feedstocks. The end product can be a “drop-in” hydrocarbon fuel. The renewable diesel project uses a modified yeast.
The pilot plant, which was completed in September, is an important milestone for Amyris towards its goal of developing and commercializing its hydrocarbon-based fuel, which it expects to bring to market in 2010.
The plant serves as a technical gateway to commercialization in Brazil and other manufacturing locations. It will demonstrate Amyris’ technology in scaled-down process equipment that is representative of full commercial scale operations; generate engineering data for designing Amyris’ full scale plants; and produce product samples for performance testing.
Other attributes of the Amyris diesel in addition to the performance attributes of the renewable diesel that equal or exceed those of petroleum-sourced fuels and currently available biofuels include:
Preliminary analyses show that Amyris diesel fuel has virtually no sulfur and significantly reduced NOx, particulate, carbon monoxide and hydrocarbon exhaust emissions relative to petroleum-sourced diesel fuel.
Because Amyris renewable diesel contains many of the properties of petroleum diesel, Amyris can blend the fuel at high levels—up to 50%—compared with 10-20% for conventional biodiesel and ethanol.
Unlike many commercially available biofuels, Amyris expects to distribute its renewable diesel through the existing fuel distribution and storage infrastructure, thus speeding time to market while minimizing costs.
Amyris can produce its fuels from a broad range of feedstock including sugar cane and cellulosic biomass. It is starting with Brazilian sugar cane because it provides the most environmentally sound, economical, and scalable source of sugar available today.
In parallel with this effort, Amyris will open a larger pilot plant in Campinas, Brazil in the spring of 2009 where it will finalize processes for Brazilian operations; transfer the technology to manufacturing sites in Brazil; and provide ongoing support for optimizing production in Brazil.
Earlier this year, Amyris established Amyris-Crystalsev Biofuels, a Brazilian venture in partnership with Crystalsev, one of Brazil’s largest ethanol distributors and marketers, to work with Brazilian sugarcane mills and fuel producers to scale up production of Amyris diesel fuel. SantelisaVale, the second-largest ethanol and sugar producer in Brazil has committed two million tons of sugar cane crushing capacity for the initial production of Amyris diesel, including its flagship Santelisa mill.
Amyris is working on the development and commercialization of a range of renewable products, including diesel fuel, jet fuel and specialty chemicals.
The platform has already proven successful through the development of a strain of yeast to enable the production of a precursor to artemisinin, a key ingredient in anti-malarial drugs, at significantly lower cost than can be achieved with conventional technologies. This technology was developed as a not-for-profit initiative, and has been transferred to sanofi-aventis.
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