Cellulase Fusion Enzyme
The Project
The development of our cellulosic fusion enzyme for the bio-fuel market would provide energy and economic benefits. Combining multiple enzymatic properties into one unit reduces manufacturing costs while increasing mashing efficiency, thus more energy for less cost. Both of these activities work synergistically to lower the cost to produce ethanol fuel from renewable resources.Specifically for the cellulosic fuel producers that require at least three enzymatic activities; combining activities into one fusion enzyme has the potential to reduce enzyme costs by 30% or more. For enzyme manufacturers, bio-fuel has been projected to be a $5 billion enzyme market. Currently the cost to convert cellulose material to fuel is about $2.25 per gallon of ethanol. The cost per gallon of ethanol for enzymes to convert plant material to fermentable sugars is $0.30 to $0.50. Compared to ethanol produced from corn cellulose biomass is inexpensive but the enzyme costs are 4X to 7X more. A 30% reduction in enzyme costs could result in reducing yearly operating costs for a single 50 MGPY cellulosic ethanol producer between $300,000 and $5,250,000. The economic benefits of developing cellulosic fusion enzymes for bio-fuel production are aligned with Phase III efforts to produce usable industrial quantities of material. Such efforts would require a work force educated in the specifics of industrial recombinant protein production (potentially create 20 – 30 new employment opportunities) and the building of a bio-manufacturing facility to produce our fusion enzyme technology.
The Market
Current estimates of the enzyme market for bio-fuels reach $5 billion. The current costs for enzymes used to produce ethanol fuel from corn ranges between $2.12 / Kg - $4.77 / Kg depending on the vendor, the volume and contractual agreements (C2B market study). Based on work performed by the two world leading enzyme manufactures (Novozymes and Genencor) demonstrates that cellulosic enzymes can cost between $0.10 - $0.30 / gallon of ethanol produced. Simply put, a single 100 million gallon per year (GPY) bio-fuel production business will spend between 10 and 30 million dollars on enzyme alone. The USA consumes ~150 billion gallons of gas / year; each state uses ~3 billion gallons / year. Therefore the cost for cellulosic enzyme to produce an equivalent amount of ethanol fuel for New York State on average would range between $300 and $900 million dollars / year.
The competitive advantage of fusion enzyme technology is the ability to combine multiple activities into one product which reduces bio-manufacturing costs. Market barriers for C2B are start up costs associated with manufacturing volume and time to market. Other barriers include large established competition in the industrial enzyme field. Consumable costs are market barriers for bio-fuel manufactures that intend to commercialize cellulosic hydrolysis to produce ethanol because of the amount and number of enzymatic activities required. Our advantage is the fusion enzyme has the potential to reduce the cost of enzyme to make ethanol by combining multiple enzymatic activities into one product. Manufacturing one product with multiple activities for the cost of one can reduce the cost of enzyme production.