SBIR Phase II: Novel enzymes for producing homogeneous preparations of individual, monounsaturated industrial fatty acids

这个小企业创新研究（SBIR）二期项目的更广泛的影响/商业潜力是开发和扩大一个生产用于润滑油的生物基化学品的制造平台。该制造平台将利用生物衍生的糖碳源，并通过微生物发酵将这种碳转化为更高价值的产品。与目前油脂化工行业生产的复杂脂肪酸混合物相比，该项目开发的技术将提供包含更简单的单不饱和脂肪酸混合物的产品流，这将消除昂贵的分离成本，并直接用于合成经济高效的高性能润滑剂。由于这些分子的润滑性能得到改善，这项技术将有可能提高工业和运输机械的能源效率。通过利用生物碳原料和生产可生物降解的产品，这项技术有可能减少润滑油行业的环境足迹。随着单不饱和脂肪酸在表面活性剂和聚合物等其他行业的应用，预计会产生更多的有益影响。这项技术在润滑油市场的巨大商业潜力已经被确定，目前价值为每年1230亿美元，预计在未来5年内将增长到每年1780亿美元。SBIR二期项目旨在开发新型生物基单不饱和脂肪酸的技术，为润滑油提供新的化学结构，这是石油基原料无法实现的。在第一期项目成功开发出能够生产富集单不饱和脂肪酸的菌株的基础上，第二期项目将进一步降低技术风险，并扩大生产能力，以生产足够数量的单不饱和脂肪酸，供潜在客户评估。通过优化和扩大发酵过程以及开发产品提取程序，将生产出大量的第一代产品（富集55%的单不饱和脂肪酸）。它将用于化学合成高性能润滑剂（即多元醇酯），其物理化学和摩擦学性能将被评估并提供给潜在客户。在本项目中，将运用代谢工程、系统生物学和进化策略进一步改进菌株，以生产富含单不饱和脂肪酸（70-80%）的第二代产品，并实现商业可行的技术指标。单不饱和脂肪酸被设想为平台化学品，用于随后的化学转化为许多特殊化学品，这些化学品在其他市场有应用，如表面活性剂和聚合物。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project is the development and scale-up of a manufacturing platform for producing bio-based chemicals for application in lubricants. This manufacturing platform will utilize biologically derived sugar carbon-source and transform this carbon to higher value products via microbial fermentation. In contrast to the complex mixture of fatty acids currently produced in the oleochemical industry, the technology developed in this project will deliver a product stream containing simpler mixtures of monounsaturated fatty acids, which will eliminate the costly separation cost and be directly used to synthesize cost-efficient high-performance lubricants. Due to the improved lubrication performance of these molecules, this technology will potentially increase the energy efficiency of industrial and transportation machinery. By utilizing biological carbon feedstocks and producing bio-degradable products, this technology has the potential to reduce the environment footprint of the lubricant industry. More beneficial impacts are anticipated as we expand the application of monounsaturated fatty acids into other industries, such as surfactants and polymers. A large commercial potential of this technology has been identified in the lubricant market, currently valued at $123B per annum, and predicted to grow to $178B per annum in the next 5-years. This SBIR Phase II project proposes to develop technology that will deliver novel bio-based monounsaturated fatty acids that provide new chemical structures allowing innovations in lubricants not possible from petroleum-based raw materials. Based on successful development of bacterial strains capable of producing enriched monounsaturated fatty acids in the Phase I project, the Phase II project will further de-risk the technology and scale up the capability to produce sufficient quantities of monounsaturated fatty acids to be evaluated by potential customers. By optimizing and scaling up the fermentation process and developing the product extraction procedure, large quantity of the first generation product (55% enriched monounsaturated fatty acids) will be produced. It will be used to chemically synthesize high-performance lubricants (i.e., polyol esters), whose physical-chemical and tribological properties will be evaluated and provided to potential customers. In this project, metabolic engineering, system biology, and evolutionary strategies will be applied to further improve the strains for producing second generation products that are more enriched in monounsaturated fatty acids (70-80%) and achieve commercial viable technology metrics. The monounsaturated fatty acids are envisioned as platform chemicals for subsequent chemical conversion to numerous specialty chemicals that have applications in additional markets, such as surfactants and polymers.