Yokohama delivers world’s first for producing butadiene from biomass

Yokohama claims it has developed the world’s first technology capable of efficiently producing butadiene from a biomass.

The breakthrough was achieved by the Bio-monomer Production Laboratory, which the tyre maker jointly established with the Riken and Zeon Corporation.

Butadiene is a core raw material used to make synthetic rubber used in automobile tyres and other products.

Currently, industrial butadiene is produced as a by-product of naphtha pyrolysis. As such, Yokohama says the development of an independent butadiene production technology will help reduce dependence on petroleum and lower carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, a major cause of global warming.

The joint research team states it has succeeded in creating cells with “excellent butadiene-producing ability using new artificial pathways and enzymes”.

This makes it possible to go through cheaper intermediates than conventional metabolic pathways, and by incorporating the knowledge of the enzymes that have been developed thus far, the cost of butadiene fermentative production will be significantly reduced, the research team adds.

Yokohama, Riken Center for Sustainable Resource Science (CSRS), and Zeon have been cooperating in joint research project since 2013. The Bio-monomer Production Laboratory was established inside Riken in April last year, and under Riken’s “Integrated Collaborative Research Program with Industry” it has been accelerating research that will achieve deliverables needed by society.

Going forward, the team says it will conduct research to establish more highly productive enzymes and an efficient purification technology by organically fusing the know-how and technologies of Yokohama, Riken and Zeon.