Polyhydroxy fatty acid ester (PHA), a family of materials, has the advantages of 100% degradation and animal edible, which is expected to be high.
BJWG Biomaterial Technology Corporation is leading the world in the research and development of biodegradable materials PHA related products, and its ability to produce multiple PHAs has reached the first place in the world.
The company continues to explore and solve problems such as PHA process and cost optimization, and build a world leading "super cell factory".
The core technology of BJWG originates from the accumulation of the team of Tsinghua University for more than 30 years, and has been developed in the field of biodegradable biomaterials for more than 40 years.
In the traditional PHA production plan, there are many problems in the production process, such as high temperature sterilization energy consumption, complex production process, and easy contamination in the fermentation process, which lead to high manufacturing costs and hinder the large-scale application of this material.
The R&D team took the lead in researching "the next generation of industrial biotechnology". Its core is to use extreme microorganisms growing in special environment, such as acidophilic bacteria, basophilic bacteria, psychrophilic bacteria, thermophilic bacteria, etc. as chassis cells to establish an open and non sterile continuous fermentation production system.
After several field soil screening, the R&D team found a halophilic bacteria. This strain has the advantages of natural synthetic PHA, suitable for continuous high-density culture, and not easy to be infected by other microorganisms. It can realize non sterile fermentation.
"The unique living environment of halophilic bacteria allows the application of halophilic bacteria in the production of PHA to directly eliminate the step of high-temperature sterilization. At the same time, the bacteria can accumulate PHA more efficiently after genetic transformation. After being applied to the actual industrial mass production, the energy consumption can be reduced by more than 50%, and the requirements and costs of the construction of the production line will also be greatly reduced.".
Since 2015, on the basis of halophilic bacteria, the R&D team has carried out several transformations to cultivate a new generation of halophilic bacteria that can use a variety of substrates to produce PHA, making it more suitable for industrial mass production.
Relying on the "Next Generation Biotechnology" platform, the original strain of BJWG has achieved the production of one strain and multiple products through more than 20 iterations, and can synthesize more than 30 kinds of PHA materials with different properties.
Now BJWG has gradually built the world's leading fermentation system and achieved industrial mass production. The company's capacity to produce multiple PHAs has reached the first in the world.
As a "new star" among various degradable plastics in the market, PHA has broad application prospects in biodegradable packaging materials, tissue engineering materials, slow release materials, electrical materials and medical materials due to its excellent material properties.
BJWG's main business is to research, develop, produce and sell a variety of high value-added products such as PHA, pharmaceutical intermediate tetrahydropyrimidine, and nylon 56 precursor pentanediamine. In addition, the multi product pipelines of inositol, amino acid, 3-hydroxypropionic acid, amylase and glucoamylase are also advancing in a synchronous and orderly manner.
BJWG mainly uses the cutting-edge "next generation industrial biotechnology" platform to build a "super cell factory". "You can understand that products are 'produced' from cells.
Focusing on the market demand, BJWG has carried out extensive layout in the fields of medical medicine, cosmetics, clothing and textiles, biodegradable materials, etc.
As raw materials, its products are used in key components of medical devices, medical implant materials, medical consumables, 3D printing materials, antibacterial fiber textiles, contact lens cosmetics and other products.
Green and low-carbon is a major feature of PHA products. "The PHA products produced by the company can be rapidly degraded in the natural environment within 1 to 3 years after use, and the substances generated after degradation will not have adverse effects on the environment".
Different from traditional biological manufacturing, the raw materials of this "cell factory" can be straw, kitchen waste, waste industrial acetic acid, etc. "BJWG can use kitchen waste, straw hydrolysis sugar, etc. as the carbon source of cells to achieve production without corn, starch and other grains, so as not to compete with people for food." Zhang Yixin talked about it.
In October 2020, BJWG will build a 1000 ton PHA intelligent demonstration production line, and the first batch of products will be officially launched.
In March 2021, a PHA production base with an annual output of 10,000 tons will be built. The project will also be the largest production line capable of producing PHA types in the world.
In addition, BJWG has also reached strategic cooperation with many well-known enterprises, such as North China Pharmaceutical, China Textile Academy, Hengxin Life, Engebai, Tongjieliang, Novozymes, etc., to jointly promote the downstream application process of products.
BJWG applied PHA materials to take out packaging such as disposable straw and disposable lunch box, and was successfully selected into the "Science and Technology Innovation China" Lush Mountain Environmental Protection Technology Innovation Demonstration Project.
These cooperation will further open up the upstream and downstream of the green industrial chain, so that new synthetic biology products such as PHA can be more widely integrated into industrial applications and people's daily lives.
In the future, BJWG also plans to establish 3-5 large-scale production bases covering the whole country within 5 years, and continue to expand production to 10,000 tons or several hundred thousand tons.