If we want to decrease greenhouse gas emissions, the world is going to have to find ways to make renewable alternatives to things that are currently made from fossil fuels. As our largest example, POET annually produces 1.5 billion gallons of ethanol that displaces gasoline from petroleum.
However, fuels are far from the only things in this country that come from petroleum. There is a long list of products that are made from oil. One of the primary areas of research and development from POET is finding renewable ingredients that can replace those that come from oil.
So on Blog Action Day, POET announces a new co-product, Inviz, a protein with little nutritional value that can replace the synthetic petroleum-based ingredients in films, packaging, adhesives, coatings and glazes, as you can read in the release.
Among the first to notice were bloggers Doris de Guzman at Green Chemicals and Cindy Zimmerman at Domestic Fuel. You can listen to interview with POET VP of Commercial Development Scott Weishaar here.
As I said in this morning's post about the scientist behind Inviz, we have many people at POET looking at many products beyond ethanol that can replace those made from fossil fuels. We're working on the biorefinery of the future (see image below). I thought that would be something worth talking about this Blog Action Day.
Do all of your plants use the BFRAC and BPX processses? If so, will they all produce Zein?
Posted by: Kum Dollison | October 16, 2009 at 09:45 PM
KD,
Thanks for the question. It's been a while since you posted one. 24 of our 26 plants have the BPX process and 3 of those also have BFRAC. Inviz will be produced only at Scotland to begin with since that plant would have the ability to supply the entire current market. As the market for zein grows, we will look to expand it to our other plants.
Posted by: Nathan Schock | October 19, 2009 at 08:18 AM
Nathan, thanks for your reply. Good luck with the harvest.
Posted by: Kum Dollison | October 19, 2009 at 01:26 PM