Universal bacteria-manufacturers

Scientists from Genomatica Inc. A few days ago they told us that they had managed to grow a special type of bacteria capable of producing plastic without processing oil industry waste or natural gas.
A small, single-celled tube requires only a little more sugar and water to produce 1,4-butanediol (BDO) , which is suitable for the production of everything from plastics and polymer fibers to drugs.
According to the researchers themselves, it will take no more than a year for the natural and eco-friendly process to cost less than current production methods. To do this, it is necessary to achieve a volume of 1.3 million tons of BDO per year.



Today, butanediol is produced exclusively from oil and gas, and the energy consumption of this industrial sector is enormous (and, consequently, pollution). And processing simple sugar and other organic products, with normal pressure and temperature, is practically agricultural with only a little “bacteriological” bias. In any case, Genomatica is seriously planning to start producing BDO with its renewable organic microbial stocks.
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A new type of plastic will be produced in huge tanks, in the manner of biofuels, and the company plans to use types of sugar that are not used in the mass market in order not to provoke a rise in prices for products containing organic (in other words: the most common) sugar.