PLA Supplier Gets Grant To Explore Biomethane As Feedstock
NatureWorks and Calysta receive DOE grant aimed at ongoing program to develop Ingeo PLA feedstock diversification.
The Bioenergy Technologies Office of the Department of Energy (DOE) has just awarded a grant to NatureWorks, Minnetonka, Minn., one of the world’s leading PLA suppliers, and Calysta Energy of Menlo Park, Calif., which has been developing new Biological Gas-to-Liquids and Biological Gas-to-Chemicals technologies using methane as a new feedstock for high value chemicals and transportation fuels with reportedly cost and performance advantages over current processes.
The $2.5-million multi-year grant will support the two firms’ ongoing program that aims to sequester and use methane, a potent greenhouse gas, as a feedstock for NatureWorks’ Ingeo PLA biopolymers and intermediates. It will bolster the joint effort to meet the specific goal of transforming, via new and advanced fermentation processes, renewable biomethane into lactic acid, the building block for PLA.
This R&D collaboration with Calysta addresses NatureWorks’ strategic interests in feedstock diversification and a structurally-simplified, lower-cost Ingeo production platform and leverages Calysta’s Biological Gas-to-Chemicals platform for biological conversion of methane to high-value chemicals. For NatureWorks, methane could become an additional feedstock several generations removed from the simple plant sugars used today in a lactic acid fermentation process at the company’s Blair, Nebraska Ingeo production facility.
Calysta has demonstrated lab-scale production of lactic acid from methane, a major milestone in the project, and the company expects to complete fundamental R&D within the next couple of years, enabling pilot production within three-to-five years.
A greenhouse gas that is 20 times more harmful than CO2, methane is generated by the natural decomposition of plant materials and is a component of natural gas. Biomethane refers specifically to renewably sourced methane produced from such activities as waste-water treatment, decomposition within landfills, farm wastes, and anaerobic digestion. If successful, the technology could directly produce lactic acid from any of these methane sources.
Want to find or compare materials data for different resins, grades, or suppliers? Check out Plastic Technology’s Plaspec Global materials database.
Related Content
-
Multilayer Solutions to Challenges in Blow Molding with PCR
For extrusion blow molders, challenges of price and availability of postconsumer recycled resins can be addressed with a variety of multilayer technologies, which also offer solutions to issues with color, processability, mechanical properties and chemical migration in PCR materials.
-
Recycling Terminology Can Be a Minefield, So We Should Tread Lightly
Loose propagation of terms like “recyclable” and “compostable” has already brought down government regulations on labeling. The plastics and packaging industries should take that to heart with other recycle-related language. Like “monomaterial” for example.
-
How to Extrusion Blow Mold PHA/PLA Blends
You need to pay attention to the inherent characteristics of biopolymers PHA/PLA materials when setting process parameters to realize better and more consistent outcomes.
