Grant: CCI Applied Research and Development Grants

We put forward a proposal on the exploratory work for the development of an aqueous-based extraction process of Polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHA). PHA molecules are bio-sourced monomers employed for the fabrication of degradable plastics, as a green alternative to petroleum-based plastics. Genecis Bioindustries Inc (Genecis), the company responsible of this novel process, has teamed up with KEMITEK, a College Centre of Technology Transfer (CCTT), to evaluate specific steps in the extraction process that will, ultimately, seek to enhance the PHA extraction yield as well as the PHA purity and specifications. For this, three milestones are considered: 1) the development of PHA analytic method to evaluate the product, 2) the study of thermal shock to increase the size of the PHA, and 3) the evaluation of enzymes as secondary step to finely tune down the molecular weight of the PHA. The present work has a significant impact on Genecis current efforts to scale up their process, as milestones 2 and 3 will enable improving PHA yields, achieving higher paste throughput, shifting to small and low-cost equipment, and finely targeting the molecular weight specifications of the PHA. Furthermore, this work will benefit society given the widespread utilization of plastic, which stand at 609 billion in 2022. As such, the development of a cost-effective bioplastic production process could ultimately lead to a significant reduction in the consumption of oil-based plastics in Canada, as well as the generation of “green” jobs in the short (R&D stage) and long term (Commercialization stage). Genecis has been the recipient of multiple awards due to their innovative solutions to plastic, meanwhile KEMITEK has a record of participating in “green” solutions and has been awarded multiple RDA on the field of “green” and sustainable processes.