Science

Production Process

Feedstock: Our production process begins with a source of sugar. While the Amyris industrial synthetic biology platform can use a wide variety of feed stocks, our initial focus is on sugarcane due to its abundance, low cost, price stability and sustainable production. Sugarcane is grown, collected and delivered to a sugar mill, where it is crushed to extract the sugar. The sugar juice is then moved to fermentation tanks.

Fermentation: Our fermentation is similar to the process used to brew beer or make wine. In those processes, yeast is used to convert sugar into ethanol. Our process uses our engineered yeast to convert sugar into a class of compounds called isoprenoids which includes pharmaceuticals, nutraceuticals, flavors and fragrances, industrial chemicals and chemical intermediates, and fuels. The initial isoprenoid we are focused on is a 15-carbon hydrocarbon, beta-farnesene.

Recovery: Farnesene is a hydrocarbon – an oil. Being an oil, it forms a separate phase and floats on top of the fermentation broth. Because of this, the recovery and purification of the hydrocarbon is a relatively simple process, similar to separating cream from milk.

Finishing: The products we make are very flexible and can be chemically derivatized into a variety of products. Through different finishing steps, we can turn farnesene into a renewable diesel, a surfactant used in soaps and shampoos, a cream used in lotions, a number of lubricants, or a variety of other useful chemicals.

Each of these steps in the production process– from the feedstock, through fermentation, to recovery and finishing – use processes that are used by other industries today. Our unique innovations come in how we integrate these processes and combine them with our industrial synthetic biology platform.