Biobased Routes To Butadiene Advance

Synthetic fibers producer Invista and biotech firm LanzaTech say they have created a tool kit that customizes microbes to produce butadiene and precursors such as 1,3-butanediol and 2,3-butanediol from waste CO and CO₂. Invista uses butadiene as an intermediate in producing nylon 6,6. The firms say it will take several years to commercialize the new process. LanzaTech already uses its fermentation technology to produce ethanol from steel plant off-gases. The biotech firm Genomatica and Brazil’s Braskem recently reported producing butadiene at lab scale from sugar using a direct microbial process.