Oakbio and OSU Awarded $500,000 Grant to Develop System for production of Butanol and Plastics from CO₂

Apr. 21, 2014 – SUNNYVALE, Calif. — The Climate Change and Emissions Management Corporation (CCEMC) of Alberta, Canada announced today that it has awarded a $500,000 grant to Oakbio, a Sunnyvale, CA-based cleantech company, and The Ohio State University for their proposal submission; “Conversion of industrial CO₂ emissions into biofuels and chemicals.”

This project has been awarded $500,000 for Round 1 of the CCEMC’s Grand Challenge – Innovative Carbon Uses program. In this program Oakbio will develop a system for converting carbon dioxide from Alberta industrial fluegas emissions into butanol and other biofuels using the system they developed for production of bioplastics.

“The CCEMC is thrilled to support Oakbio in their leading efforts to convert industrial carbon dioxide emissions into biofuels and chemicals and reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the process,” said CCEMC Chair Eric Newell.

“Butanol is a fuel and feedstock, and polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs) are versatile plastics. Together these products are sufficient in volume of demand to account for the capture of a significant amount of globally produced CO₂. The Oakbio process is intended to make that large scale capture and conversion of waste CO₂ a profitable business,” said Oakbio President and Chief Scientist, Brian Sefton.

A collaboration with Prof. F. Robert Tabita of The Ohio State University to further develop this n-butanol production platform is a key part of this proposal. “Synthetic biology principals will guide the further construction of optimized strains for product formation” said Dr. Tabita.

Key underlying technology for this work was developed under a grant from the Advanced Research Projects Administration Energy (ARPA-E), and performed at The Ohio State University.

About Oakbio, Inc.
Oakbio is a private technology-based company in Sunnyvale dedicated to sustainable, large scale production of fuels, plastics and other chemicals using novel microbial production a process that combats climate change by enabling profitable conversion of waste CO₂ into valuable products.

About the Climate Change and Emissions Management Corporation
The Climate Change and Emissions Management Corporation focuses on stimulating transformative change by funding projects that reduce greenhouse gas emissions and help Alberta adapt to climate change. The CCEMC receives its funding through a grant from the Alberta Government’s Climate Change and Emissions Management Fund. The CCEMC operates arms-length of government.

Source: Oakbio Inc., press release, 2014-04-21.