News has arrived from Denver (the company) and the UK (the project and partners) that SynTech Bioenergy will build what it terms “a revolutionary clean-energy plant in the United Kingdom capable of carbon negative operation.” Carbon negative – what’s that? Carbon negative generally means that some of the resulting carbon is sequestered — possibly in […]
Every airline has pilots, but then there’s the Chief Pilot, and in the advanced bioeconomy the chief pilot is known by the ungainly acronym ABPDU, which might as well decode as “All Bioeconomy Processes Developed Upstairs,” but actually stands for the far more modest “Advanced Biofuels Process Demonstration Unit.” It’s run out of the Berkeley […]
This week, news arrived from Amyris that they have purchased the Glycotech facility in Leland, North Carolina where, since 2011, they have been on a contract basis converting their farnesene into squalane for the cosmetic markets. Total purchase price for the small manufacturer was $4.35M — a good deal for a manufacturing site with more […]
Last week, a company with the unlikely name of Synata Bio was the winning bidder in the race to acquire the former Abengoa Bioenergy cellulosic plant in Hugoton, with a bid of $48.5M, which you might regard as “three coins in the fountain”. They beat out a bid from Shell you might regard as “two […]
Beck’s joins the Benson Hill Biosystems genetics ecosystem In Missouri, more signs of the democratization of crop genetics arrives with news major seed retailer Beck’s will leverage CropOS, Benson Hill’s cognitive platform, to accelerate and enhance their corn breeding program. The Beck’s’ backstory Beck’s is a family-owned and operated seed company that serves farmers in […]
In political circles, the theme of “Better Together” has been under siege of late — barely winning (for now) in the Sctoland independence, debate, and losing unexpectedly in the Brexit vote — but it remains a theme for surviving and thriving in the advanced bioeconomy. We tipped it a few months ago, in “The Rise […]
Fair to say that, hands-down, the most interesting bioconversion engines ever assembled were crowd-sourced, if you will, via evolution — and they reside inside plants (aquatic and terrestrial). There appears to be no end to the metabolic pathways they contain. And, despite millions of years of frenetic evolution, as Sinatra sang it in 1964 with […]
Winter barley and early tomatoes may sound like a dull foundation upon which to further a revolution in agriculture — but then again, the Spanish hardly developed California in two centuries of sovereignty because they couldn’t see the point. As Master Po said in Kung Fu, “Because a man can see, he does not look.” […]
In Minnesota, Cargill and Calysta revealed that they will co-create the world’s largest gas fermentation facility in Memphis, Tennessee to produce Calysta’s FeedKind protein, a family of sustainable, traceable nutritional ingredients for fish, livestock and pets. Start-up is expected in late 2018. So we’re going to Graceland. Memphis that is, home to Elvis. What exactly is […]
BETO. I think it’s Latin for “I forbid petroleum.” So while presidents have the Veto, technologists have the Beto. It’s most widely known in its modern variant, as the acronym for the DOE’s Bioenergy Technologies Office, the hearth and home of the US government’s efforts to change the energy mix. At ABLC Next 2016, the Bioenergy Technologies Office’s […]
