Chemical Engineering May 2016 - 12

would have incurred significant additional
costs with alternative solutions and lost
the revenue we were able to monetize by
eliminating flaring and selling the gas into
the pipeline. "
making h2 in norway
NEL ASA (NEL; Oslo, Norway; www.nelhydrogen.com)
- together with Sintef,
Statoil, Linde Kryotechnik, Mitsubishi
Corp. Kawasaki Heavy Industries, NTNU
and The Institute of Applied Energy,
among others - has initiated the project
" Hyper, " a feasibility study of the potential
for large-scale H2 production in Norway
for export to the European and Japanese
markets. " We are looking at a scenario in
which production of 225,000 tons of hydrogen
could fuel as many as three million
cars annually, " says Bjørn Simonsen, market
development director of NEL.
Sintef Energy Research (Trondheim, Norway;
www.sintef.no) is the host organization
and the lead research partner for Project
Hyper. The project is planned and financed
through 2019. The total project cost is estimated
at NOK20 million. It is funded by
a NOK14-million grant from the Research
Council of Norway (ENERGIX), in addition to
the contributions from the project partners.
Making PLGA by one-step fermentation
A
Korean team, headed by
professor Sang Yup Lee of
the Korea Advanced Institute
of Science and Technology
(Daejeon, South Korea; www.kaist.
ac.kr), has obtained various forms
of PLGA [poly(lactate-co-glycolate)]
from natural sources, allowing plastics
to be made in an environmentally
friendly manner.
PLGA is a copolymer of lactic and
glycolic acid. It is biodegradable,
biocompatible and non-toxic. It has
been widely used for surgical sutures,
prosthetic devices, and in drug delivery
and tissue engineering. Up to
now, PLGA has been synthesized by
means of a catalytic ring-opening copolymerization
of two different monomers,
the cyclic dimers (1,4-dioxane2,5-diones)
of glycolic acid and lactic
acid. In contrast, the Korean team
is able to biologically produce PLGA
(and several novel copolymers) from
renewable biomass by a one-step,
direct fermentation by metabolically
engineered Escherichia coli.
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Initially the researchers developed
a method for producing PLGA in engineered
E. coli. The process involved
eliminating the genes responsible for
byproducts formation and enhancing
the expression of certain genes,
thus achieving the effective production
of certain target polymers. However,
the team saw that it could not
enhance the polymer content and
glycolate fraction of PLGA via further
engineering techniques. Therefore,
they introduced a heterogeneous
pathway to produce glycolate from
xylose and succeeded in developing
the recombinant E. coli that produce
PLGA more efficiently.
PHA (polyhydroxyalkanoates) synthase
was used to produce monomers
inside the bacteria by metabolic
engineering, and then copolymerize
to improve the properties of PLGA. A
variety of PLGA copolymers were produced,
with varying monomer compositions
approved by the U.S. Food
and Drug Administration (FDA; Silver
Spring, Md.; www.fda.gov).
n
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12
ChemiCal engineering www.Chemengonline.Com may 2016
www.nol-tec.com
http://www.kaist http://www.ac.kr http://www.nel http://www.hydrogen.com http://www.sintef.no http://www.fda.gov http://www.nol-tec.com http://adlinks.chemengonline.com/61495-25 http://www.Chemengonline.Com
Chemical Engineering May 2016

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Chemical Engineering May 2016
