Optimising feedstock utilisation for a fermentation-derived palm oil alternative

优化发酵棕榈油替代品的原料利用率

• 批准号: 10064370
• 金额: $ 8.77万
• 依托单位: SUN BEAR BIOWORKS LTD
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Collaborative R&D
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2023 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=10064370
• 关键词: Optimising; feedstock; utilisation; fermentation; derived

Palm oil is everywhere. It's in food, cosmetics and biofuels. It's in 50% of our supermarket products. Palm oil is unique in the vegetable oil market; it melts in your mouth, is great for cooking and is a high-yielding crop. However, palm oil is one of the biggest carbon emitters due to loss of tropical rainforest and peatland to make way for plantations - it contributes over 500 million tonnes of CO2e, over 1% of global emissions, from 19 million hectares of tropical land. It has caused significant habitat loss, including for the Orangutan and Sun Bear, and all too often the smallholders do not receive a fair price for their produce.The UK Government has committed to reaching Net Zero by 2050; 20% of UK emissions stem from agriculture and the food supply chain and these emissions must be tackled if we are to reach these targets.Sun Bear Bioworks is using precision fermentation to make an alternative to palm oil. We are optimising a yeast strain that naturally produces oil, in order to create our oil from food waste quickly and efficiently. Our process saves 5.7kg CO2 and 2000m2 land for every kg of palm oil - a saving in both cases of 80%. We are working with Evolutor on this project to optimise our strain's ability to process low-grade, sustainable feedstocks. Feedstock accounts for most of our process cost at scale, and finding a scalable sugar alternative is vital if we are to create maximum environmental impact. This builds on the work we carried out as part of our Fast Start award, project 10045430 "Alternative feedstock for precision fermentation of oil", which has allowed us to prove expression of key enzymes in our yeast strain for the metabolism of starch.

棕榈油无处不在。它存在于食品、化妆品和生物燃料领域。我们超市50%的产品都含有这种成分。棕榈油在植物油市场上独树一帜；它入口即化，非常适合烹饪，是一种高产作物。然而，棕榈油是最大的碳排放源之一，因为热带雨林和泥炭地的流失为种植园让路——它贡献了超过5亿吨的二氧化碳当量，占全球排放量的1%以上，来自1900万公顷的热带土地。它造成了包括猩猩和马来熊在内的栖息地的严重丧失，而且小农的产品往往得不到公平的价格。英国政府承诺到2050年实现净零排放；英国20%的排放来自农业和食品供应链，如果我们要达到这些目标，就必须解决这些排放问题。太阳熊生物公司正在使用精密发酵来制造棕榈油的替代品。我们正在优化一种自然产油的酵母菌株，以便快速有效地从食物垃圾中生产出我们的油。我们的工艺每生产一公斤棕榈油可节省5.7公斤二氧化碳和2000平方米土地，两种情况下均节省80%。我们正在与evoltor合作这个项目，以优化我们的菌株处理低品位，可持续原料的能力。原料占我们大规模生产成本的大部分，如果我们要创造最大的环境影响，找到一种可扩展的糖替代品至关重要。这建立在我们作为快速启动奖的一部分进行的工作的基础上，项目10045430“用于精确发酵油的替代原料”，这使我们能够证明我们的酵母菌株中用于淀粉代谢的关键酶的表达。