French company claims G2 biofuels breakthrough
2 Oct 2012
Paris - French biotech company DEINOVE has isolated and optimised a strain of Deinococcus bacteria, which it claims can efficiently generate ethanol from wheat-based biomass.
DEINOVE is leading the project, along with involving sugar group TEREOS and its subsidiary BENP Lillebonne – Europe’s second largest bioethanol producer – together with two academic laboratories CNRS-Université Montpellier and INSA Toulouse/CNRS/INRA.
According to DEINOVE, the bacteria can degrade complex biomass residues into simple sugars and convert them into ethanol, all in a single process and without additives,such as enzymes, yeast or antibiotics. The technology is said to facilitate production of an alcohol content of more than 3%, exceeding its proof-of-concept target.
The development has triggered the payment of Euro1.15 million by the French ministry of industry under the OSEO programme. This takes the total paid to date by OSEO to DEINOVE and its partners is Euros4.5 million out of a total Euros8.9 million granted for this project.
While bioethanol production is currently limited to food biomass and utilises methods based on multiple-stage and fermentation using yeast, DEINOVE said its “all-in-one” bacterial factory could open the door to more efficient processing of non-food biomass.
“Deinococcus can degrade more than 80% of the plant biomass but can also potentially produce industrial quantities of bioethanol”, stated DEINOVE’s CEO Jacques Biton.
“We are now entering the pre-industrial phase of the DEINOL project.”
Philippe Pouletty, co-founder and chairman of DEINOVE, added: “DEINOL’s results show that DEINOVE and its first industrial partner TEREOS are at the forefront of this global race for a bioethanol manufacturing standard.”
Once in the fermenter, the bacteria retain their properties because their genome remains stable due to their intrinsic properties, DEINOVE said. The bacteria can also tolerate the physical and chemical stress they may encounter during industrial processes.
The bacterial strain is capable of converting biomass between 40-60°C. These temperatures, said DEINOVE, are inaccessible to the current processes that work at 35°C and require cooling, high cost reactors and the prevention of microbial contamination that occur at these temperatures using antibiotics.
The Deinococcus multifunctional strain is also said to ensure the successive degradation of different components rich in sugar and carbon of the plant biomass and fermentation without additives.The bacteria are currently able to digest cellulose and hemicellulose – as found in non-food biomass.
The project has now reached the “pilot laboratory” phase in which experiments will be conducted in DEINOVE labs to a scale of a few hundred litres. This work will be conducted in collaboration with TEREOS and is currently the subject of consultation between the partners in order to optimise the process.
The completion of the pilot laboratory phase will trigger a further payment from OSEO. TEREOS will then take over the project and seek to validate the process on an industrial scale in one of its plants.
