Solugen wants to reimagine the chemistries of everyday life. The Houston-based biomanufacturing company also says it can decarbonize the physical world. Since 2016, when friends Gaurab Chakrabarti and Sean Hunt officially formed their company, investors, would-be partners, and well-known international companies like ADM and Sasol have been listening.&nbsp;They’ve raised multiple investment rounds and currently hold a valuation somewhere in the $2 billion range. Even for high achievers like Chakrabarti, a scientist/chemist from a family of chemists (who admittedly was never really sure he wanted to be one), and Hunt, a chemical engineer from MIT who studied renewable energy and green chemical manufacturing, their early feats have been noteworthy. Forbes believes they are. Along with Fast Company, which named Solugen among the world’s most innovative companies in 2023, and Ernst &amp; Young, which named both Hunt and Chakrabarti to its 2023 U.S. Entrepreneurs of the Year list.&nbsp;The Houston duo has built a team of 230-plus scientists and engineers. The company has incorporated artificial intelligence into its novel processes to help speed things up. For example, Solugen brought in a former Netflix executive who played a role in creating (with the help of AI), the ubiquitous streaming platform's recommendation system. &nbsp;They’ve repurposed an idle polyethylene wax production facility in Houston into a proving-grounds for a biomanufacturing concept they call the Bioforge. In October 2023, Solugen announced the formation of a strategic partnership with ADM to build a 500,000-square-foot manufacturing facility (a Bioforge) adjacent to ADM’s corn wet mill facility near Marshall, Minnesota.“There are only three things we care about with our process,” Chakrabarti says, conveying Solugen's top priorities in the form of questions. “Is it a high-yield process? Is it an efficient process? And, is it a capex-efficient process?” So far, work at the pilot facility in Houston has shown all of those things to be true for Solugen’s process of combining enzymatic production with metal catalysts and modern separation techniques. In Marshall, Chakrabarti says, the company now has an opportunity to continue its mission of reimagining the chemistries of everyday life. If everything goes as planned, Chakrabarti and his team believe it could be a transformative moment in biomanufacturing.AI, Enzymes, Metal Catalysts and the Bioforge&nbsp; At the heart of Solugen’s work is a chemi-enzymatic process developed by Ghakrabarti and Hunt when they were still in college. After collaborating on a competition through MIT (they finished second) the duo kept developing their idea. Using AI-engineered enzymes with metal catalysts, their process can bypass the limitations of traditional fermentation, allowing Solugen to produce molecules at room temperature using biobased feedstocks with no toxins and no waste. The Bioforge setup routinely achieves final product yields (i.e., amount of feedstock directly converted to biobased chemicals) over 90 percent.&nbsp;The base setup requires water, compressed air and nitrogen, along with electrical power. In Houston, the team uses wind power. To create its biobased products, Solugen combines corn syrup with deionized water and compressed air. Feedstock is pumped into an enzyme reactor where specialized, engineered enzymes go to work. Membranes in the reactor keep the enzymes in place and allow for the continuous harvest of molecules. At that stage of the process, an intermediate product is created—which is only accessible by the enzymatic cascades, not via traditional fermentation or thermal chemicals. The intermediate product is then processed in separate tanks and combined with compressed air to interact with engineered metal catalysts. This process converts the intermediate to the final product, usually at the aforementioned 90 percent or higher yield. Then, the final product is evaporated into a liquid concentrate for shipping and stored in an inert nitrogen atmosphere to keep it fresh and free of contaminants. If a customer wants a solid final product, Solugen will feed the liquid concentrate into a crystallizer and store the crystallized product in either super sacks or 50-pound bags.According to Chakrabarti, different types of reactions have their own advantages and limitations. Fermentation is great at making complex macromolecules, but often struggles with small molecules. Enzymatic production can perform complex chemistries in a single step but is typically slow. And metal catalysis can do simple chemistry quickly, but suffers with more complex operations.The system Solugen has created, the Bioforge, combines the best parts of each process to turn feedstock directly into the intended product with little to no carbon emissions and hazardous waste.&nbsp;In 2023, the U.S. EPA awarded Solugen with a Greener Synthetic Pathways award. The award was largely tied to the company’s development of the Bioforge, noting its cell-free chemo-enzymatic manufacturing process made up of three primary operations including that enzymatic reactor, metal reactor and evaporator. “This first-of-its-kind platform combines the process safety and complex synthesis capabilities of fermentative routes with the high productivity, selectivity and pH tolerance of gold catalysts,” EPA said.In addition to Solugen’s ability to decouple enzyme production from enzyme reactions, or the use of a gold nanoparticle catalyst that provides more than 90 percent carbon yield and selectivity, the EPA was impressed with the company’s use of mechanical vapor recompression powered by wind. “This process is now being used to produce a variety of different chemicals; compared to current technologies, this production method has greater yield from the glucose feedstock, releases less C02, and eliminates wastewater.The high efficiency of the Bioforge could almost redefine biomanufacturing economics. It’s high efficiency requires less capital investment, equipment size and operational footprint compared to traditional plants, according to the company.“This means we can build a Bioforge faster and cheaper than any fermentation or petrochemical manufacturing plant can be built,” Chakrabarti says. “We’re talking months, not decades.”In Marshall, Solugen will bring its Bioforge concept to life in a big way. The plan is to build a facility next to ADM’s corn complex using standard off-the-shelf petrochemical refining equipment with its IP-protected catalysts. A will milling coproduct, dextrose, will be the feedstock. Dextrose is readily available worldwide and is clean, sustainable and proven.&nbsp;With ADM, Solugen will be going beyond a commercial supply agreement of its organic acids, collaborating on potential commercialization opportunities for the biobased chemicals it ultimately produces.“Partnering with us offers [ADM] an innovative avenue in which they can diversify the products made from their corn stream and participate in fast-growing segments,” Chakrabarti says.The work in Marshall will also free up space and bandwidth to develop more products back in Houston, which is home to the company's main R&amp;D hub. Solugen has a wide variety of organic acids for use in a range of markets. For the energy sector, it produces a cement set-time decelerator, an iron control agent and a biocide potentiator. In water treatment, Solugen products include scale and corrosion inhibitors and biocides. For agriculture, it makes complexing agents for plant nutrition and water conditioner adjuvants. In the home care sector, it offers detergent builders (Sasol chemicals recently formed a partnership with Solugen on that one). And in the personal care space, products include exfoliators, humectants and pH adjusters.Chakrabarti says, over the next decade, Solugen will expand its product pipeline to molecules that include plastics, amines, glycols and several other commonly used chemistries that underpin a significant portion of modern life.The Marshall facility will be connected to the ADM facility via pipeline. Solugen also has access to rail at the location. In addition to the Houston facility and soon-to-be Marshall biorefinery, Solugen also operates a 10,000-square-foot warehouse space in West Texas that primarily services clients in the oil and gas space.In Minnesota, design and construction of various components has already begun. In addition to new equipment, Chakrabarti says the company will look to reuse equipment, similar to how it repurposed equipment at the idle polyethylene wax facility in Houston. On-site construction will begin in early 2024 and the facility will be fully operational by 2025.The Future for Solugen&nbsp; The Marshall Bioforge is expected to be the first of many, Chakrabarti says. “The modular nature of the Bioforge will allow us to deploy a network of plants rapidly and cost-effectively worldwide,” he says. “This approach decentralizes manufacturing, minimizes the transport of materials and promotes safety.”The team is already making big plans for the future. Over the next decade, the company will launch a new array of molecules. Bioforge Marshall will open in 2025. From there, the long-term plan is to deploy an extensive network of commercial-scale Bioforge platforms producing “new molecules” that are the “key building blocks of the bioeconomy,” they say. Where will additional Bioforges be located? Chakrabarti hints at the type of suitable locations by saying the Marshall site is ideal because of ADM's presence, the population density of the area, and the plant's proximity to market—it’s just 150 miles from Minneapolis, 90 miles from Sioux Falls and an hour from U.S. Interstate 29—as well as the potential for offtake agreements in the region.Despite its biobased nature, Solugen isn’t trying to define itself as a biobased products manufacturer. Its real value proposition is carbon reduction—the efficient decarbonization of everyday chemicals and products at scale. That's what Chakrabarti and Hunt want Solugen to be known for. &nbsp;The Bioforge is simply a means of doing things better. “Our angle has never been to lead with being a biobased story,” Chakrabarti says. “We are demonstrating a better product with a similar price.” Author: Luke Geiver&nbsp;&nbsp; Contact: writer@bbiinternational.com

2024-01-03 - Rise of the Bioforge (Ethanol Producer Magazine)

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Building a 500,000-square-foot plant next to an ADM wet mill in southeastern Minnesota, Solugen is poised to make a big impact on the biomanufacturing sector.  

Rise of the Bioforge

Rise of the Bioforge

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