SAN DIEGO, CA —  Chemicals company Genomatica has partnered with Waste Management to turn gas from trash into chemicals with the help of organisms.

Genomatica creates organisms that are used to convert sugars, biomass and syngas into common chemicals.

Syngas, or synthetic gas, is produced in a number of ways, and Waste Management makes it from anaerobic digestion of waste, gasification of waste and from landfill gas. 

As part of a joint development agreement between the two companies, Genomatica will create organisms and manufacturing processes for turning syngas into major-market chemicals.

Syngas is typically used to generate energy or to create fuels and chemicals. Genomatica says that its process of using organisms should be more economical and efficient than other processing methods.

One of the goals of the project is to be able to make chemicals out of syngas that comes from various types of waste, which would mean that chemicals could be produced anywhere there is a landfill or syngas source.

If the project works out, it could create an additional revenue stream for Waste Management, which has lately been diversifying its services beyond simply picking up trash to include more recycling services and turning landfill gas to energy.

Genomatica is still working to commercialize its first product, a bio-based version of the common chemical 1,4-butanediol (BDO). The market for BDO is about $3 billion a year, and the chemical is used to make spandex, automotive engineering plastics, and other materials. 

Genomatica first made BDO out of sugars and genetically-modified E. coli, instead of petroleum and natural gas, in 2008. The next year it demonstrated it could use a variety of sugars to make BDO, and in 2010 it completed a pilot run of BDO. Genomatica says that in two months it scaled up 100-fold from its lab tests to produce multiple 3,000-liter batches of BDO at not-for-profit tech company MBI. In the test run, Genomatica met its targets for making bio-based BDO cheaper than petroleum-based BDO.

_{Landfill - CC license by D'Arcy Norman (Flickr)}