Since its startup in November 2014, Global Bioenergies’ industrial pilot—installed on the Pomacle-Bazancourt agro-industrial site near Reims in France—has been operated almost continuously with the support of ARD, an affiliate of French sugar producer Cristal Union. The first tasks consisted in scaling up the fermentation results achieved in the laboratory, followed by the startup of the purification and packaging module to allow the production of purified isobutene batches.

Thanks to the cooperation of ARD’s and Global Bioenergies’ teams, the scaling up of our process in our industrial pilot has been achieved in record time. This is in line with our fundamental belief that the fermentative production of a gas facilitates the scaling up efforts. This hypothesis is being confirmed day after day.

—Frédéric Pâques, Global Bioenergies’ COO

One cylinder filled with liquefied isobutene was then shipped to Arkema’s Pierre Bénite site south of Lyon as part of the BioMA+ project, which is financed by the French State (Investissements d’Avenir, operated by the ADEME). The isobutene will be converted into methacrylic acid—a key component of acrylic paints—at a pilot unit operated by Arkema.

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 performances of its process, operates its industrial pilot and has begun the construction of its demo plant. The company also replicated its achievement to propylene and butadiene, two members of the gaseous olefins family, key molecules at the heart of petrochemical industry.