TOKYO -- Japanese companies large and small are making headway toward turning living organisms into fuels and industrial materials. Investors are taking notice.
Genaris, a biotechnology venture in Yokohama, uses colon bacilli to produce chemical substances.
Genaris, a biotechnology venture in Yokohama, runs a plant in the nearby Keihin industrial zone. Inside, a metal tank roughly as tall as an adult man is home to bacteria that could prove very valuable.
"It's hard to imagine, but 200 billion colon bacilli are swimming in there," a senior official at the plant said. Genaris is using them to try to raise the value of recycled plastic bottles. The idea is to convert the plastic into gallic acid, a chemical used in production of semiconductors, and other substances.
There are already heat- and chemical-based methods of recycling plastic bottles. But the substances these techniques produce are generally equal in value or cheaper than the recycled materials themselves. Using colon bacilli could "produce a substance worth 2,000 yen ($16.80) from a 200 yen material," said Genaris President Tatsunari Nishi.
This so-called upcycling -- turning waste into new materials or products of higher value -- is made possible by gene recombination technology, which can remove certain substances. And Genaris says it has this part down. "We already know what we should do with genetic manipulation," said Nishi, who is eyeing an initial public offering.
Big companies are also focusing on single-cell colon bacilli that can be readily manipulated genetically.
"There is no example of biological polypropylene in the world," said Mitsufumi Wada, head of a biotechnology strategy group at Mitsui Chemicals. The company wants to change that.
Currently, the thermoplastic polymer can only be produced from oil. It is used in a wide variety of products, including plastic containers, home appliances and automobiles. Wada is convinced that colon bacilli hold the key to making the polymer from other sources as well, such as wood chips.
Mitsui is thinking about forming international partnerships in this field, Wada said. The company aims to release polypropylene made with the new method in five years.
Man-made gas fields
Other kinds of bacteria are generating a buzz, too. Sumitomo Bakelite, a plastics company, has developed a way to use a strain of toxin-resistant bacteria to produce a phenol resin. It plans to open a trial plant for the germ-killing resin in Chiba Prefecture, near Tokyo, this fiscal year through March.
Oil company Inpex is undertaking an experiment to convert carbon dioxide, buried underground, into methane. The key ingredients: bacteria that produce electrons by absorbing organic matter, and ones that make methane from CO2 and hydrogen. The company envisions creating artificial gas fields this way.
Ajinomoto, which uses bacteria to produce food seasonings, is studying ways to make rubber and fiber, too.
The brightening prospects for new, sustainable materials have some stock investors giddy. Officials at Kobelco Eco-Solutions, a maker of water treatment and other environmental systems, were surprised Sept. 9 when the company's stock price jumped 17% from the previous close.
Kobelco had announced a new project to cultivate euglena, a type of algae, after the previous day's trading. The stock went limit-up the following two days.
Itty-bitty oil producers
Euglena organisms measure only 0.05mm each, yet they produce oil more efficiently than palm trees. If you were to cultivate euglena on a 10,000 sq. meter area and do the same with palm trees, in a year you would get 20 times more oil with the former.
Oil from euglena has a wide variety of applications, including in foods, medicines and jet fuel.
Kobelco has developed a system to cultivate the algae by feeding glucose and other substances in a closed tank. Unlike the conventional method based on photosynthesis, Kobelco's system can produce euglena in large amounts regardless of weather conditions.
"Our system is 250 times more efficient than the photosynthesis-based method," a manager said.
Kobelco plans to start selling oil made this way in fiscal 2016, as a food material. It aims to provide it for jet fuel in fiscal 2020.
A Tokyo-based company that has named itself after the algae is pushing ahead with research, too. Euglena was the first to successfully cultivate the green stuff on a large scale. More recently, it developed euglena-based desserts with partners such as convenience store chain FamilyMart.
The company has also launched a project with Isuzu Motors to test diesel oil made from euglena.
Mitsuru Izumo, Euglena's president, stressed that the company will "use all profits for future investments." To speed up expansion, Euglena plans to increase spending on advertising and research and development during its current fiscal year, which runs through next September.
(Nikkei)
