Economic and Environmental Assessment of Biological Conversions of Agile BioFoundry (ABF) Bio-Derived Chemicals
Bio-derived chemicals are an essential part of the growing bioeconomy. They possess the potential to boost a new domestic bioproduct industry, improve the sustainability of integrated biomanufacturing, and reduce U.S. dependence on fossil energy. The Agile BioFoundry (ABF) consortium, a Department of Energy (DOE)-sponsored collaboration, is investigating biobased pathways to produce advantaged products including advanced biofuels, fuel intermediates, and bioproducts. ABF is integrating advanced computational tools for biological engineering, process design and data analysis, and economic/sustainability modeling tools into a comprehensive and dynamic platform for biomanufacturing of microbes and using them to produce key metabolic intermediates or beachhead molecules which may be derivatized into several distinct bioproducts of industrial interest. In this presentation, we first discuss a methodology to select a single exemplar product molecule to represent each beachhead pathway based on similarities with other end-molecule options (yields/titers/rates, fermentation operation mode, oxygen requirements, general separations challenges, etc.), in order to maintain a reasonable number of cases for rigorous process simulation. We then use techno-economic analysis (TEA) and life-cycle analysis (LCA) to highlight sensitivities and trends around economic performance and environmental footprint, reflecting examples for two selected ABF technology pathways to bio-derived chemicals: 1) adipic acid production via muconic acid fermentation from mixed sugars with Pseudomonas putida and 2) cineole via geranyl diphosphate with Rhodosporidium toruloides. We present multi-variable scan plots highlighting key drivers on costs and greenhouse gas emissions in order to identify the parameter space in which each pathway could ultimately achieve economic and environmental sustainability meeting or exceeding commodity product benchmarks, thus prioritizing future R&D focus areas.
- Research Organization:
- National Renewable Energy Lab. (NREL), Golden, CO (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), Transportation Office. Bioenergy Technologies Office
- DOE Contract Number:
- DE-AC36-08GO28308
- OSTI ID:
- 1812487
- Report Number(s):
- NREL/PR-5100-78106; MainId:32015; UUID:79f74603-83e4-44ee-b9d5-dbefd5e35e13; MainAdminID:48423
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: Presented at the 2nd Bioenergy Sustainability Conference, 13-15 October 2020
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
Similar Records
Further engineering of R. toruloides for the production of terpenes from lignocellulosic biomass
Genomewide and Enzymatic Analysis Reveals Efficient D-Galacturonic Acid Metabolism in the Basidiomycete Yeast Rhodosporidium toruloides