A domestic bio-technology that uses waste resources to mass-produce eco-friendly plastic and fiber feedstocks has been developed in Korea. The breakthrough is being touted as a future core technology that could eventually replace naphtha in the petrochemical industry.
The Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) said Wednesday that the KAIST-Hanwha Solutions Future Technology Research Center, in collaboration with Hanwha Solutions, has secured a technology to mass-produce the eco-friendly chemical feedstock 1,3-propanediol (1,3-PDO) using glycerol, a waste byproduct generated during biodiesel production.
1,3-PDO is a core material used in plastics, fibers, cosmetics and functional materials, but it is typically produced from petroleum-based feedstocks such as naphtha. Instead, the research team developed a high-efficiency microbe that converts waste glycerol into the feedstock. The team also optimized the fermentation process to improve productivity.
Notably, the technology successfully maintained high production concentrations at the 300-liter pilot scale, the stage just before actual factory application, going beyond the laboratory level. This demonstrates that the research outcomes can be applied at real industrial sites in the future.
The team also introduced a "digital design technology" that uses computer simulations to pre-design microbial metabolism, along with an "antibiotic-free process" that stably extracts feedstock without antibiotics. These approaches lowered production costs and reduced environmental regulatory burdens.
"This research is significant in that it confirmed the possibility of replacing existing petrochemical processes by utilizing bio-based feedstocks," said Kim Jung-dae, head of Hanwha Solutions' research center. "We expect it to serve as an important foundation for sustainable chemical material production and industrial application going forward."
KAIST said the research is the result of about 10 years of industry-academia collaboration between KAIST and Hanwha Solutions since 2015, adding that the project has yielded six patent applications and 13 published papers. The research findings are scheduled to be featured as the cover paper of the May issue of the international academic journal Nature Chemical Engineering.
