Tropicalizing the Transition: Radix, Cemvita, and the Engineering of a Circular Bioeconomy
It’s 6 o’clock at the Digest editorial desk, and screens have given way to sunscreen. We’re scanning the day’s headlines from the shade, a glass of something red-amber in hand — the Diablito, a Florida Keys invention of rum, blood orange, lime, and a hint of trouble. In the late light, it looks suspiciously like jet fuel, which is probably why our thoughts drifted, as they often do, to Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) and the steady drumbeat of progress coming out of the industrial tropics.
Brazil, in particular, is starting to feel less like a geography and more like happy hour for the energy transition—abundant feedstocks, relentless sun, and engineers figuring out how to make the economics work in the real world.
That’s the backdrop to this month’s news from Radix and Cemvita, who are advancing front-end engineering for a Brazilian facility designed to convert crude glycerin into ultra-low carbon intensity (CI) bio-oil. It’s a precursor that can be upgraded into drop-in refinery feedstocks or HEFA-based SAF. The science matters. But the bigger story is engineering discipline, capital efficiency, and what the teams call “tropicalization.”
The News: Engineering, Not Just Biology
For years, climate biotech has been haunted by the “valley of death”—the gap between lab success and steel in the ground. Radix’s role in this alliance is not to admire the biology; it’s to make it survive pumps, valves, uptime targets, utilities, logistics, and capital budgets.
By redesigning a U.S.-style concept for Brazilian industrial realities—adapting equipment sourcing, layout, and integration with local biodiesel infrastructure—the partners report close to a 40% reduction in cost per ton of bio-oil produced. In SAF economics, that’s not a rounding error. That’s the difference between an interesting technology and a bankable project.
Two numbers now define this chapter of Cemvita’s journey:
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~40%: The cost reduction unlocked through tropicalized engineering.
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2026: The target for a Final Investment Decision (FID).
SIDEBAR: Meanwhile, at the Marina…
While Cemvita is mixing glycerin in the tropics, XFuel just secured a $20 million Series A to clean up the docks. On January 27, 2026, the Mallorca-based firm announced backing from maritime titans NYK Lineand Stolt Ventures.
Their “Chemical Liquid Refining” (CLR) technology is the ultimate dockside mixologist: it takes MARPOL Annex I sludge—the literal “well-drink” waste from ship tanks—and converts it into ultra-clean, drop-in Marine Gas Oil. With a $9 million EIC grant also in the bag, XFuel is proving that the circular economy isn’t just about plants; it’s about making sure the “trash” never leaves the party.
From Visionary Biology to Industrial Discipline
To appreciate the weight of this moment, rewind to 2017. Cemvita, founded by Moji and Tara Karimi, entered the scene with a radical premise: nature already runs the most efficient carbon economy on Earth. Why not recruit microbes to do industrial decarbonization instead of forcing molecules together with heat and pressure?
Their platform leans on three sophisticated pillars:
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Synthetic Biology for Carbon Utilization: Engineering microbes to convert or into specific chemical backbones.
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Bio-Inspired Pathways: Drawing from extremophiles adapted to harsh environments (think deep-sea vents or oil reservoirs) to survive industrial reactors.
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Electrobiochemical Integration: Coupling renewable electricity with biology (Power-to-X) to store energy in chemical form.
Early explorations ranged from terrestrial decarbonization to concepts that sounded closer to science fiction—even Martian utilization. But Cemvita’s evolution mirrors the sector’s: visionary slides giving way to the grit of industrial reality.
The Expanding Portfolio: From Oil Fields to Flight Paths
Cemvita’s versatility has allowed it to play on multiple stages at once:
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Gold Hydrogen: Perhaps their most disruptive concept. By injecting engineered microbes into depleted oil wells, residual hydrocarbons are metabolized into hydrogen. This “subsurface refinery” approach leverages existing infrastructure and has attracted heavyweights like Occidental Petroleum (Oxy).
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Sustainable Aviation Fuel: Long before the Radix deal, Cemvita was tuning its microbes for flight. The Brazil project accelerates this by using crude glycerin—the “well drink” of the biodiesel world—as a cheap, abundant shortcut to commercial scale.
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Biogenic Mining: Leveraging extremophiles for “bioleaching” to extract critical minerals from low-grade ores, offering a lower-footprint alternative to traditional smelting.
Conclusion: The Bioeconomy Grows Up
The signal from Brazil (and Mallorca) is clear. The bioeconomy isn’t just inventing molecules—it’s learning how to build under real constraints, with real capital, in real markets. By bringing engineering rigor to synthetic biology, Radix and Cemvita show what sector maturity looks like.
The microbes are ready. The engineers are on site. The Diablito is finished. Now, it’s time to pour the concrete.
And since you didn’t ask…
The Diablito
2 oz Dark Rum
¾ oz Lime Juice
½ oz Blood Orange
¼ oz Grenadine
¼ oz Allspice Dram
2 dashes Bitters
¼ oz Everclear
Shake hard. Big ice. Watch out. May work as a SAF blend.
Category: Top Stories
