BioTork offers licenses and developments in the following markets:
FATTY ACIDS
Also called microbial or renewable oil, fatty acids are the only serious alternative to petroleum oil. Using specific processes, such as the one developed by Honeywell's UOP, fatty acids can be refined into the chemical equivalent of fossil fuels and many petro-chemical products. The main barrier to fatty acid production today is the cost of feedstock. Current production processes rely on existing microorganisms that are only efficient with simple sugars and are grow poorly on complex ones, which are more cost effective. BioTork is building its library of microorganism based on the abundance and cost of feedstock.
ALCOHOL FUELS:
The main aliphatic alcohols ethanol, methanol, butanol and propanediol can all be produced biologically using specific microorganisms and renewable organic feedstock. Alcohol fuels could play a much larger role in the response to affordable energy demand with reduced production costs. Today, pretreatment and saccharification represent close to 90% of the production of certain alcohol fuels. BioTork is developing microorganisms to be capable of processing complex carbon sources with substantially reduced pretreatment and saccharification costs.
BASIC AND INTERMEDIATE CHEMICALS:
The market for bio-based basic and intermediate chemicals currently exceeds $2 billion. On the other hand, petroleum based chemicals comprise a market of $15 billion. As petroleum reserves are being depleted, and the price of a barrel of petroleum is skyrocketing, chemical producers will need cheaper and more available carbon sources. Biomass could be that carbon source, provided the right microorganism is available to convert it into a high value chemical using the cheapest and simplest production process.
BioTork cannot offer services for end products that do not fit within these three segments. If you need to improve the metabolic performance of microorganisms to produce other types of product, you need to contact www.evolugate.com