Employing synthetic biology to manufacture high-performance carbon-negative materials, Visolis Inc is organized around production of carbon-negative, high-performance polymers. The firm also produces isoprene, methyl-isoproplyketone (MIPK), polyols, monomers for polyurethanes, elastomers, unsaturated polyester resins, and super-absorbent polymers from dextrose, glycerol, and syn-gas. Conversion of biomass into useful fungible chemicals and fuels is a long-standing challenge with a key requirement of such processes being high efficiency of conversion for economic viability. Biomass derived sugars are highly oxygenated and need processing to remove to be converted into useful hydrocarbons.Visolis is developing an integrated bio-thermochemical platform for production of a specialty chemical, which can be used for the production of performance polymers as well as directly blended into existing gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel upon simple and cheap chemical transformation. The key component is development of the microbe, catalysis process, and fermentation scale up.Upon full development, enabling production of the same chemical at half the current market price from renewable sources. The firm is demonstrating a fermentation route towards an intermediate from biomass and catalytic conversion of this intermediate towards a valuable specialty chemical use in the polymer industry with high conversion rate and purity at large pilot scale.
