Value Days at the Landfill: The Digest 2017 Multi-Slide Guide to unlocking polylactic acid from waste biogas

Methane in biogas offers a renewable alternative to natural gas as a feedstock and intermediate in bioprocesses. The US DOE is supporting a development effort led by NatureWorks in collaboration with Calysta to develop a commercially viable, disruptive fermentation process using methane in biogas and engineered methanotrophic bacteria for the production of lactic acid (HLA). Such a waste-to-energy process for the production of bioproducts can enable cost-competitive advanced biofuels production.

In this project, the team aims to demonstrate fermentation metrics at 2L scale that give lactic acid cost of goods produced (COGP) <$0.30/lbHLa, and NatureWorks’s Ken Williams presented this illuminating update at DOE Peer Review on progress to date.