The biosurfactant makers Dispersa and AGAE Technologies are each scaling up production in moves that together will add more than 1,000 metric tons (t) per year of new capacity to the market for this emerging class of biobased surfactants.
Biosurfactants, also called glycolipids, are surfactants with sugar groups covalently attached to fatty acid tails. Made from biomass via fermentation, the ingredients are finding use in cleaning, personal care, agriculture, and industrial products. The most commercially advanced types are rhamnolipids, based on rhamnose, and sophorolipids, based on the disaccharide sophorose.
Dispersa CEO Nivatha Balendra says the firm is in the process of moving from its 1,000 L pilot plant to a reactor at an undisclosed location that can produce 100 t of product per year. The firm’s main offering is a blend of two sophorolipids made from food waste, aimed primarily at cleaning markets. The scale-up is powered in part by $5.8 million in seed funding that the firm recently raised.
Consumer demand for biobased products and regulations on 1,4-dioxane, which is generated during the production of some synthetic surfactants, are driving customers to experiment with unconventional surfactants, especially in new product launches, Balendra says. “We are seeing this trend in our growing customer base as well, with folks moving towards 1,4-dioxane-free alternatives.”
AGAE Technologies, meanwhile, has opened a 3,800 m2 plant that the firm says can produce more than 1,000 t of rhamnolipids per year. Todd Jones, who leads business development and sales for the firm, says the move from pilot scale will allow AGAE to supply customers with industrial-scale volumes.
The new plant is in Asia, but the firm is not disclosing more than that, citing concerns about political tension and intellectual property protection. Jones says AGAE is already working on another plant, to be built in the US within the next few years.
Getting the desired product out of the fermentation broth efficiently is a crucial challenge in the microbial production of chemicals. “Completing this plant complex was only possible because of the cutting-edge foam control technologies and the data we gathered from years of trial and error at our benchtop bioreactor and fermentation pilot plant,” Garrett Holzwarth, a fermentation scientist at AGAE, says in a press release.
Ryan Cotroneo, chief technical officer at the industrial and institutional cleaning chemical distributor UNX-Christeyns, says he doesn’t expect rhamnolipids to completely replace workhorse synthetic surfactants such as alcohol ethoxylates, which are known for their performance and formulation flexibility.
But Cotroneo says increased output from firms like Dispersa and AGAE will make formulators less hesitant to try replacing synthetics. “These firms are establishing standards that manufacturers can rely on for justifying the incorporation of new ingredients,” he says.