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

小型企业创新研究(SBIR)第二阶段项目的更广泛影响/商业潜力是开发和扩大生产用于润滑油的生物基化学品的制造平台。这个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些碳转化为更高价值的产品。与石油化工行业目前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，并直接用于合成成本效益高的高性能润滑油。由于这些分子的润滑性能得到了改善，这项技术将潜在地提高工业和运输机械的能效。通过利用生物碳原料和生产生物可降解产品，这项技术有可能减少润滑油行业的环境足迹。随着我们将单不饱和脂肪酸的应用扩展到其他行业，如表面活性剂和聚合物，预计会产生更多有益的影响。这项技术的巨大商业潜力已经在润滑油市场被发现，目前价值为每年1230亿美元，并预计在未来5年内增长到每年1780亿美元。该SBIR第二阶段项目建议开发一种技术，提供新型生物基单不饱和脂肪酸，提供新的化学结构，从而实现石油原料无法实现的润滑油创新。在第一阶段项目成功开发出能够生产浓缩单不饱和脂肪酸的细菌菌株的基础上，第二阶段项目将进一步降低技术风险，扩大生产足够数量的单不饱和脂肪酸的能力，供潜在客户评估。通过对发酵工艺的优化和放大，以及产品提取工艺的开发，将生产出大量的第一代产品(浓缩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。在这个项目中，将应用代谢工程、系统生物学和进化策略来进一步改进菌株，以生产更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上有应用，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.