Raleigh, North Carolina-based Integrated BioChem (IBC) has announced that it has received a Canadian patent for its Managed Ecosystem Fermentation (MEF) process. The United States Patent and Trademark Office already has issued three patents on the process for converting biomass into industrial chemicals.
MEF is a new manufacturing process that biologically converts cellulose and other organic materials into protein and industrial chemicals. It is a continuous, self-sustaining fermentation process that is focused on economics, resulting in a significant reduction in the energy required, thereby making the process environmentally and economically sustainable, according to IBC. The MEF process can produce several thousand dollars of revenue per ton of organic waste, the company adds.
IBC says the MEF process it developed takes inbound organic waste, such as food waste, paper and other food processing waste streams, and converts 95 percent of this material into saleable products. Using MEF, 3 to 10 tons of waste per day can be processed in a plant the size of several 40-foot containers. The waste that remains after the process amounts to less than 5 percent of the material input.
Industrial chemicals created by the MEF process include enzymes, protein, lipids and phospholipids. These products are suitable for use in the paper, animal feed, pharmaceutical, cosmetic, lubricant, sealant and adhesive industries.
“As waste becomes a bigger and bigger problem around the world, we realized the solution had to be both environmentally sustainable and economically sustainable,” says Edward Calt, CEO of IBC. “The MEF process meets those goals by converting waste to revenue.”
IBC says it will present on its MEF process at the Waste Conversion Conference in San Diego in August 2017.