MSU BioEconomy Network news

The world’s rubber supplies are in peril, and automobile tire producers are scrambling to seek alternative solutions.

Tom Sharkey, chairperson of the Michigan State University biochemistry and molecular biology department, believes isoprene, a gas given off by many trees, ferns and mosses, could be a viable option. Some plants use it as a mechanism to tolerate heat stress as opposed to most crops, which stay cool through evaporation.

Michigan Biotechnology Institute (MBI) announced a successful pilot campaign for the BioAcrylic process created by OPX Biotechnologies Inc. (OPXBIO), demonstrating successful scale up of the fermentation process at the 3,000-liter scale.

BioAcrylic is a renewable alternative to petroleum-based acrylic acid, for which there is a $10 billion market, including in such products as diapers, detergents, paints and adhesives. OPXBIO has partnered with The Dow Chemical Company to bring BioAcrylic products to the market.

If the increased use of biomass to produce alternative fuels is to become a reality, more attention needs to be paid to logistics – how, for example, biomass raw materials are shipped from farm to refinery, as well as the development of better ways of preparing the products for shipping.

Entrepreneurs and small businesses can now apply for a range of subsidized business support and chemical production scale-up services from the MSU Bioeconomy Institute in Holland, Mich. The support and services are funded through an Economic Development Administration i6 Green “Proof of Concept Center” grant.

The Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center (GLBRC) was established by the Department of Energy in 2007 in order to focus the most advanced biotechnology-based resources on the biological challenges of biofuel production. The center is led by the University of Wisconsin-Madison, with Michigan State University as the major partner. Additional scientific partners are DOE National Laboratories, other universities and a biotechnology company.