Sugar Cane Drives Amyris Venture into Biofuel

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OAKLAND, Calif. -- Amyris Biotechnologies Inc., a firm that first made its mark developing a key ingredient for an anti-malaria drug, is looking to make diesel fuel derived from sugar cane the next big thing in the biofuel market.

The company based in Emeryville has opened a pilot plant near its headquarters to refine development of the product it's calling No Compromise renewable diesel fuel. The name is based on the firm's assertions that its fuel performs as well as — and in some cases, it says, much better than — petroleum-sourced fuels and biofuels that are now on the market.

The new plant, which was completed in September and went on online the same month, is intended to be a "technical gateway," company leaders said, for the commercialization of the No Compromise fuel with a goal of bringing it to market in 2010.

The 16,628-square-foot plant is also intended as a model for a larger pilot plant the firm is building in Campinas, Brazil, with its strategic partners Crystalsev, one of the larger ethanol distributors and marketers in Brazil, and SantelisaVale, the second-largest ethanol and sugar producer in the country. SantelisaVale has committed two million tons of sugar cane crushing capacity, including its flagship Santelisa mill, to enable the joint venture called Amyris-Crystalsev to ramp up and carry out initial production of Amyris diesel.

In pursuing development of the fuel, Amyris is leveraging its technological know-how from its work in establishing a proprietary synthetic biology platform. That platform, Amyris CFO Jeryl Hilleman said, makes it possible for the company's scientists to engineer microorganisms, like yeast, and transform sugar into 50,000 different molecules. In turn, that technological flexibility enables the molecules to be used across a range of applications in pharmaceuticals, chemicals and energy.

The firm's early work in that area led to its production of a precursor to artemisinin, a key ingredient in anti-malarial drugs, much more cheaply than conventional technologies, Hilleman said.

"That is really the heart and soul of how the company started," Hilleman told GreenBiz.

The technology, the product of a not-for-profit initiative, and has been passed along to French pharmaceutical firm sanofi-aventis for scale up and commercialization, Hilleman said. Amyris, established in 2003, has carried on its own work with the technology platform to explore development of its renewable diesel as well as renewable jet fuel and specialty chemicals, she said.