Gas Fermentation to Enable Decentralized Local Biomaterials Manufacturing 

Organizations: Mango Materials, University of California, Davis, Black & Veatch

Mango Materials is scaling up and commercializing a biomanufacturing technology that utilizes methane gas to produce the biopolymer polyhydroxyalkanoate (PHA). This project will demonstrate technical, economic, and societal feasibility of novel, decentralized biomaterials manufacturing. This project will bring together Mango Materials, Black & Veatch, R2DIO, and University of California, Davis to address how this novel process can flourish in low-resource environments.  

Demonstrating the feasibility of novel, decentralized biomaterials manufacturing will open the door for opportunities to advance biomanufacturing in constrained areas with limited access to inputs, including water, energy, or process chemicals. Reducing resource use, understanding the smallest viable plant, and developing and demonstrating clear plans for training the future workforce will enable deployment of multiple biomanufacturing units in decentralized, low resource areas. This will facilitate point-of-need production for biodegradable plastic replacements while enabling decentralized production of materials.  

By creating biomaterials with locally available resources (such as untreated water or feedstocks), local regions will increase economic resiliency, avoid the need for imported plastic, and reduce costs by reducing inputs. This project will evaluate methods to minimize resource and energy use, identify the smallest biomanufacturing unit that can be cost-effective and decentralized, complete an environmental benefits analysis, and develop an outreach and training model that can be applied to different technologies and low-resource environments. 

Project dates: 2024 – present

Funding source: BioMADE Project Call 4.0