Oakbio announces n-Butanol production from municipal waste water and sewage sludge

Initial validation of ecoli based platform for > 1T$ wastewater treatment industry
By: Oakbio
SUNNYVALE, Calif. - May 20, 2015 - PRLog -- Oakbio announced today the successful production of n-Butanol from untreated waste water and primary digester sludge.

In this test Oakbio collected raw wastewater and sludge from the The San Jose/Santa Clara Water Pollution Control Plant, the main waste water processing plant serving the South San Francisco Bay Area, (Silicon Valley). The waste water and sludge received no further treatment, dilution or adjustments prior to being inoculated with Oakbio’s Escherichia coli based n-butanol production model. These results, though preliminary, show de-nitrification and breakdown of waste water and sludge and its conversion to production of n-Butanol.

“This is an exciting result, especially considering that waste water and sludge contain heavy metals and many other toxic chemicals used in homes and industry. Sludge has has proven to be one of the most difficult to breakdown components of waste water,” said Brian Sefton, Oakbio President and Chief Scientific Officer.

Currently the global market for chemicals which breakdown sludge is estimated at around 6B$ per year, and this is just for chemicals which help breakdown sludge but produce no value added products. De-nitrification is also a critical part of waste water treatment, and accounts for a significant amount of the cost of both the capital and operating expenses of the over 1T$ spent each year on waste water treatment plants globally.

The Oakbio ecoli n-Butanol producing microbe was derived from their successful CO2 to n-butanol microbe and this success with waste water and sludge greatly expand the number, and volume of waste carbon sources Oakbio can convert into n-Butanol.

“Ecoli, is a proven workhorse microbe which is currently used commercially for chemicals production. By using the same expression system in ecoli and our CO2 capture platform, we greatly reduce development cost of adding additional chemical production targets for both platforms. We have already proven that this platform, though not yet optimized can produce n-butanol to a concentration of 5 grams per liter at laboratory scale,” said Oakbio Chief Scientist Brian Sefton.

Currently Oakbio is validating this model for conversion of biomass derived carbon, agricultural and animal waste as well as additional tests on wastewater, and other common and highly available feedstocks.

“The addition of this new platform does not mean we are realigning away from CO2 capture and conversion, rather, it is a synergistic addition to our offerings and increases the number of waste carbon feedstocks which we can convert,” said Pierre Pujol, CEO of Oakbio.

Contact
Brian Sefton
***@oakbio.com
End
Source:Oakbio
Email:***@oakbio.com Email Verified
Tags:Green Technology, Waste Water, Renewables, Remediation, Sludge, Biofuel, N-butanol, Water Treatment
Industry:Biotech, Environment, Investment
Location:Sunnyvale - California - United States
Subject:Products
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Page Updated Last on: May 21, 2015



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