New Zealand's Humble Bee Bio Is Using Bees To Create Bioplastics (techcrunch.com) 12
Humble Bee Bio is on a mission to create a biodegradable alternative to plastics by synthesizing the biology of bees. TechCrunch reports: While the New Zealand-based company is still at an early stage -- it's about halfway through its proof of concept -- if Humble Bee is successful, its bioplastics are likely to make it into the sustainable textiles industry. Humble Bee, which just raised $3.2 million (NZD $5 million) in convertible notes as part of its Series A, has been studying the Australian masked bee, a type of solitary bee that doesn't make honey, but does make a nesting material for laying larvae in, which has many plastic-like properties. "It's resistant to acids and bases. It's hydrophobic, it's waterproof, it's flame retardant, it's stable up to 240 degrees Celsius," Ryan Graves, Humble Bee's chief technology officer, told TechCrunch. "The idea is, how do we recreate this?"
The team is using a synthetic biology approach that involves going into the bee's genetic code and identifying the genes and proteins responsible for the nesting material. Humble Bee has extracted the code and is trying to recreate it in the laboratory. Next, the company will attempt to synthesize plastic-like materials, focusing on four different types of biomaterials that can be turned into fibers and finishing for fabrics. Humble Bee is aiming for anywhere from March to June 2023 to prove out the concept, at which point the team hopes to scale production using industrial-scale fermentation. "There's a degree of exploration still to go on," said Graves, "The processes are time-intensive and they are challenging. Getting going from code to protein is usually a 12-month process, and then we need to scale it up to get hundreds of grams of the stuff out."
The team is using a synthetic biology approach that involves going into the bee's genetic code and identifying the genes and proteins responsible for the nesting material. Humble Bee has extracted the code and is trying to recreate it in the laboratory. Next, the company will attempt to synthesize plastic-like materials, focusing on four different types of biomaterials that can be turned into fibers and finishing for fabrics. Humble Bee is aiming for anywhere from March to June 2023 to prove out the concept, at which point the team hopes to scale production using industrial-scale fermentation. "There's a degree of exploration still to go on," said Graves, "The processes are time-intensive and they are challenging. Getting going from code to protein is usually a 12-month process, and then we need to scale it up to get hundreds of grams of the stuff out."
OMFGBFW (Score:2)
HUNDREDS ... of grams
Sounds familiar. (Score:3)
The US Department of Defense has a number of fuel production schemes in progress that individually or combined could do this same stuff. The US Navy is developing a process to extract carbon and hydrogen from water to make jet fuel, powered by the electricity from the nuclear power plant on an aircraft carrier.
The US Air Force is trying to develop biomass fuels suited to tankers and cargo planes, at least at first. Then later see if it is suited to higher performance fighters and helicopters.
The US Army and USMC is on a joint mission to "cook" out fuel from wast products created on base. Wind and solar would provide electricity and sewage, food scraps, worn out clothing, etc. then "cooked for something like diesel fuel or marine fuel oil.
These kinds of things should be coming from the Department of Energy but it seems DOD is best motivated to bring something to market.
I can see a mix of these technologies serving civil and commercial interests as well. Some appear to be duplicative efforts from the Department of Transportation.
It seems every cabinet level department is working on synthesized fuels. That is except the Department of Energy, where they work on making nuclear weapons, fusion physics, kilowatt nuclear reactors for going to Mars, and converting old Russian weapons into fuel for civilian nuclear reactors that they won't let anyone build. A "swords to plowshares" program that just remains a pile of swords.
A common raw material for plastics is ethane. Ethane is a hydrocarbon that appears to want to turn to a gas when we don't want it to be one, and won't turn to liquid when we need it. So we sell it off for plastics, fertilizers, and synthesized lubricants. Any of these DOD projects will likely produce a multitude of hydrocarbons, including ethane. Siphon off the ethane and... plastics.
Buzz (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Actually it doesn't sound like they created much buzz. This is not a "plastic" as we might define it as non-chemists. It is a more like a "silk". We think of bees creating wax, and waxes would be a starting material for a plastic. What these bees are producing is a building material that has properties more in common with spider silk. They are talking about the proteins in the silk, not carbon chains like we think of in waxes, oils, and plastics.
I took chemistry and biology classes a long time ago, and
Re: (Score:2)
Plastics become bad for the environment when they disintegrate into really small pieces that bacteria have a really hard time eating, or when their synthesis is powered by fossil fuels. Or, of course, when they are synthesized FROM fossil fuels. What we normally hear about is part one.
(Actually, plastics were originally synthesized from waste from fossil fuels, so that wasn't a real problem until the stuff stopped being waste, and became another driver for the use of fossil fuels. Before that it was just
Re: Environmental safety and renewable bio-sources (Score:1)
Well well. (Score:2)
In the book The Swarm, Arthur Herzog, 1974, the bees make use of plastic that they find:
(and many other passages)
Now they're making it themselves. Science marches on.
how about just genetically engineering giant bees (Score:1)
and put them to work making the bioplastic for you?
What can possibly go wrong? (Score:2)