Chemical Engineering January 2022 - 9

Commercial production of glucaric acid from glucose
he synthetic biology company Kalion Inc. (Milton,
Mass.; www.kalioninc.com) recently completed its
first commercial-scale production run of high-purity
(98-99%) glucaric acid via fermentation of glucose
at a custom-manufacturing facility owned by Evonik
Industries AG (Essen, Germany; www.evonik.com).
The high purities achieved by Kalion's advanced fermentation
process far outstrip those achieved by existing
bio-based glucaric acid processes at lower cost,
widening the range of possible applications.
Combined with standard unit operations, the Kalion
fermentation process uses proprietary synthetic biology
techniques developed in the laboratory of Kristala
Prather at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT;
Cambridge, Mass.; www.mit.edu) to engineer the metabolic
pathways of Escherichia coli bacteria and induce
efficient and low-cost production of glucaric acid.
The initial manufacturing produced material to meet existing
customer commitments for high-purity glucaric acid.
Among the customer applications is using glucaric acid as
a corrosion inhibitor in cooling-water treatment. Glucaric
acid obviates the need for phosphate-based inhibitors,
which can have damaging effects when allowed to run off
into coastal waters.
Darcy Prather, Kalion president and co-founder (along
T
with his MIT-professor wife) points out that Kalion's glucaric
acid would not be subject to the effluent restrictions
now common to phosphate-based solutions, and production
reduces greenhouse gas emissions by roughly
50% when compared with those alternatives.
" Use of high-purity glucaric acid expands the operating
pH range in cooling water treatment, " Prather says, and
when used for corrosion inhibition in hard-water and hightemperature
scenarios common at petroleum refineries,
" glucaric acid does not cause the precipitate fouling with
calcium that is observed with phosphate-based chemicals. "
The absence of precipitate preserves heat-transfer
efficiency in heat exchangers and cooling systems.
While the water treatment market is Kalion's initial
target, high-purity glucaric acid and related compounds
can also enhance sustainability and improve
performance as a polymer additive in textiles and coatings
applications, as well as in detergents and pharmaceuticals.
In textiles, for example, glucaric acid has
been shown to increase modulus and tensile strength
- by 50% to nearly an order of magnitude - for fibers
such as polyvinyl alcohol, polyacrylic nitrile, recycled
cotton and viscose (rayon) fibers, Prather says. Kalion
is further developing these advantages in collaborations
with fiber producers.
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Chemical Engineering January 2022

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