4 Minutes with…Ian Gosling PhD, Owner, ChemSim

Tell us about your company and it’s role in the Advanced Bioeconomy.

We are specialists in bioprocess simulation, providing expertise in process design and optimization, and techno-economic assessments. We have experience in a range of processes including bioethanol, biodiesel, biobutanol, levulinic acid, and bioplastics.

Tell us about your role and what you are focused on in the next 12 months.

The question is how much expansion and activity there will be in the next 12 months, and whether the need for services will increase or decrease.

Our role is to support any growing effort, across the entire spectrum of industrial biotechnology projects. But if policy does not support the bioeconomy, and there is no appetite for investment, then the near term future of the bioeconomy is not particularly rosy.

What do you feel are the most important milestones the industry must achieve in the next 5 years?   

The industry needs to expand to more full scale commercial, integrated biorefineries, if the economics make sense. The corn-ethanol plants are the only biorefineries where there are full scale plants, at many locations, and where co-product opportunities are being pursued.

If you could snap your fingers and change one thing about the Advanced Bioeconomy, what would you change? 

Cheaper access to capital for novel biorefinery projects to get those early processes grounded.

Some way of mitigating the risk for investors for novel processes, developed by small companies. In the past the large companies took the greatest risks with capital. Now few institutions have that appetite for risk.