Genencor's bio-isoprene project ahead of schedule

ERJ staff report (DS)

Cologne, Germany -- The joint Goodyear- Genencor project to make bio-isoprene from micro-organisms is ahead of schedule. In a paper presented at the Tire Technology conference on Tuesday, Dr Frank J. Feher outlined the origins of the project and gave a limited update on progress to date.

He said the project has progressed faster than Goodyear had expected, and now has micro-organisms which deliver yields of isoprene monomer close to those needed for commercial production of polyisoprene.

He added that the recent acquisition of Genencor's parent, Danisco, by DuPont was a welcome development. While DuPont executives have not yet sat around a table with the Genencor and Goodyear team, Feher said the extra commercial muscle available from DuPont is coming in at exactly the time when the project could be scaled up to pilot plants and then commercial plants, from simple lab-based experiments.

The Iowa Department of Economic Development has approved financial aid of $3 million to Genencor for a proposed research facility in Cedar Rapids to develop its product BioIsoprene. The news came in a press release from IDEC dated 16 December.

Feher said the company knows how to use commercially-available isoprene monomer to make polyisoprene, and the bio-isoprene monomer is, within production impurity limits, identical to petro-based isoprene. he said there are no approval barriers to making commercial quantities of synthetic polyisoprene from the bio-bnased material.

He added that synthetically-produced polyisoprene does not have exactly the same characteristics as the natural rubber made in trees, -- natural rubber is almost 100 percent in the cis-isomer, while the synthetic alternative has larger amounts of trans isomers. However, Goodyear has a great deal of knowledge of how to use synthetic polyisoprene to substitute for natural rubber in certain applications and in various products and applications within those products.

He noted that even a small saving of a few hundred dollars per tonne on isoprene monomer, would substantially improve Goodyear's cost position.