OPXBIO achieves targeted BioAcrylic commercial goals

In just 18 months, Boulder, Colo.-based biotech firm OPX Biotechnologies Inc. says it has achieved commercial bioprocess performance and cost goals for its first product offering, BioAcrylic, a biobased alternative to petroleum-derived acrylic acid.

Based on pilot process results, OPXBIO said it had achieved a commercial-scale manufacturing cost of 70 cents per pound for its BioAcrylic using corn sugar feedstock, and 55 cents per pound using sugarcane feedstock in Brazil. According to Mike Rosenberg, OPXBIO’s vice president of business development, the production cost for petroleum-based acrylic acid is on the rise and is currently estimated to be around 75 cents per pound. To produce BioAcrylic, OPXBIO uses its proprietary Efficiency Directed Genome Engineering technology to engineer high-performing microbes.

“We’ve done the pilot work on our microbe, and the microbe performs at the necessary metrics so that when we put it in our commercial model, it gives us a 70 cent cost per pound,” Rosenberg told Biorefining Magazine. “Right now, if we had a commercial plant available, we would be cheaper than today’s petroleum-based acrylic.”

The company’s pilot process achieved 79 percent production yield generating 70 grams per liter bioproduct concentration in 26-hour fermentation cycles. During the next stage of larger demonstration-scale production, the company expects to refine and improve its BioAcrylic process toward its ultimate manufacturing cost target of 50 cents per pound using corn sugar, and less than 40 cents per pound from sugarcane.

OPXBIO plans to move to larger demonstration-scale processing by forming strategic partnerships this year. Thereafter, the company plans to begin commercial-scale BioAcrylic production by 2014. According to Rosenberg, OBXBIO’s demonstration-scale plant would have an approximate capacity of 250,000 pounds to 1 million pounds a year with a targeted annual output volume of 100 million pounds for its first commercial facility.

“We can build an economically viable plant at a scale of around 100 million pounds whereas a petroleum-based acrylic plant needs to be about 350 million pounds to be economically viable,” Rosenberg said. “Where that gets interesting is that, today, the acrylic acid market is at about 8 billion pounds. You can imagine adding 5 to 10 percent capacity every time you add a plant does cause significant supply disruptions. So, to be able to add capacity at smaller increments is a strategic advantage because you can focus where you’re putting it, you can put it in geographic-specific locations, or target it for specific customers or specific uses.”

With its biobased acrylic acid product, OPXBIO intends to penetrate an $8 billion global market for acrylic acid, which is used in a variety of consumer and industrial products such as diapers, detergents, paints, coatings and adhesives.

“This is exciting news for us,” Rosenberg said, “because to be able to say that if we build a commercial plant today we’d be commercially viable and actually be cost-advantaged to traditional petroleum-based acrylic is a milestone many didn’t think we’d accomplish as fast as we did.”

Along with BioAcrylic, OPXBIO is concurrently working on developing its second product—biodiesel processed from carbon dioxide and hydrogen via a fermentation pathway. The company was awarded a $6 million grant by the U.S. DOE in April to support this development.