{"id":65078,"date":"2019-07-23T06:58:23","date_gmt":"2019-07-23T04:58:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rss.nova-institut.net\/public.php?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.biofuelsdigest.com%2Fbdigest%2F2019%2F07%2F14%2Fyum-yum-co2-in-my-tum-novonutrients-moves-forward-with-co2-to-fish-feed-plans%2F"},"modified":"2021-09-09T21:27:45","modified_gmt":"2021-09-09T19:27:45","slug":"yum-yum-co2-in-my-tum-novonutrients-moves-forward-with-co2-to-fish-feed-plans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/yum-yum-co2-in-my-tum-novonutrients-moves-forward-with-co2-to-fish-feed-plans\/","title":{"rendered":"Yum, yum, CO2<\/sub> in my tum \u2013 NovoNutrients moves forward with CO2<\/sub> to fish feed plans"},"content":{"rendered":"

Give a man a fish, you feed him for a day, but show him how to make fish food from CO2 and he\u2019s got fish for a lifetime. That\u2019s what NovoNutrients is working on to solve the huge global fishmeal supply\/demand issue in the aquaculture industry. You may have seen in the Digest\u2019s \u201cBreaking News\u201d story on Friday, NovoNutrients is moving forward towards their goal of transforming industrial waste CO2 into feed, initially for the fast-growing aquaculture sector, thanks to a $300,000 investment from the U.S. Department of Energy.<\/strong><\/p>\n

But that\u2019s not all. The Digest caught up with NovoNutrients leadership and got the scoop on future plans beyond the protein meal business and into Novoceutical \u2013 we are talking feed additives like: enzymes, carotenoids, vitamins, and other high-value biochemicals relevant to animal nutrition.<\/p>\n

In today\u2019s Digest, an in-depth look at the fishmeal supply and demand issue, the technology behind NovoNutrients high-protein NovoMeal, why the partnership with NREL, what this DOE funding is doing to move things forward towards commercialization, a look into the crystal ball of NovoNutrients\u2019 future, and more.<\/p>\n

The supply\/demand issue
\n\u2018There\u2019s a lot of fish in the sea\u2019 is something you have probably heard at least once in your life, maybe from your Mom after a break up or a best friend as they handed you a spoon and ice cream carton. But are there really a lot of fish in the sea?
\nIt all comes down to supply and demand\u2026more fish total demand (apparently we really like our salmon and bass!) but less fishmeal supply.<\/p>\n

Less wild fish are being caught (because there are less of them out there and there is higher demand for seafood globally) and more and more fish are being raised via aquaculture to try and meet the higher demand for the tasty sea creatures that humans love so much. But with more aquaculture, there is more demand for fishmeal to feed them. But supply is not keeping up with the demand, so the price is going up, up and away.<\/p>\n

Check out NovoNutrients data below to get a visual on the whole supply and demand issue.<\/p>\n

So how do you feed all those fish? How do you meet the increasing demand when supply is so low for fish meal?<\/p>\n

How to feed the fish?
\nThe days of mobsters \u2018feeding you to the fish\u2019 are over so there goes that idea. NovoNutrients has a much better, and legal, idea\u2026taking CO2 and converting it into high-protein feed. How can they do that?<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s get techy. To start, NREL\u2019s existing aerobic bioreaction CFD models will be adapted to NovoNutrients\u2019 gas fermentation (CO2, H2, O2) technology. The multiphysics CFD simulations require thousands of high performance computing node hours to simulate the complex geometries and contents of NovoNutrients\u2019 industrial bioreactors. The experimentally validated CFD models will be used to identify optimally efficient and productive bioreactor designs and operating conditions. Robust, physically-based computational models of the technology will significantly increase productivity and efficiency, accelerating NovoNutrients\u2019 technology to manufacturing scale.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis project supports DOE\u2019s goals for expanding the use of hydrogen in the economy and for making maximal use of fossil fuel energy and other scarce resources,\u201d said Tze. \u201cWithout this model, our technology development would rely more on time consuming trial & error experiments, resulting in additional development cycles and less efficient, higher cost, sub-optimal designs.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cUsing energy from hydrogen, we transform waste carbon \u2013 primarily carbon dioxide (CO2) from untreated industrial emissions \u2013 into protein and other high-value products for the aquaculture and animal feed industries,\u201d Tze told The Digest. \u201cIn doing so, we address three enormous challenges: the rising costs of feed ingredients for meat and seafood at a time when global consumption is increasing substantially; depletion of the world\u2019s fisheries; and climate-changing greenhouse gas emissions. The technology is based on high productivity, energy efficient microbial bio-factories that produce nutrition from CO2 and renewable energy. In creating carbon negative, high value products from low value, problematic wastes, we see a path to worldwide expansion of our manufacturing plants.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tze told The Digest that their plants can even be carbon negative if powered by renewable energy. \u201cOur technology has the potential to dramatically increase the energy efficiency and productivity of feed and food production in the United States,\u201d said Tze. \u201cRelative to protein produced by conventional agriculture, a single manufacturing plant will be up to 1000x more productive and 100x more energy efficient. If powered by renewable energy, our plants will be carbon negative, capturing up to 1.9 tons of CO2 per ton of feed produced.\u201d<\/p>\n

Why NREL?
\nNREL has unique capabilities for creating and running such computational models. \u201cThe high performance computing resources and computational fluid dynamic modeling expertise of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory will enable us to develop critical in-silico tools which will improve and accelerate our development of better gas fermentation bioreactors at scale,\u201d Brian Sefton, CTO, Founder, and President of NovoNutrients told The Digest.<\/p>\n

NovoNutrients and NREL are looking for others to work with as well to speed things up to commercialization.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur business will be increasingly dependent on successful partnerships: strategic project financing from animal nutrition companies, pilots with CO2 emitters, relationships with hydrogen producers and hydrogen production technology companies, long-term cooperation with EPC firms, broad collaboration with multi-industry conglomerates, working with cutting edge synbio tools, and a wide variety of collaborative research with institutions and other SMEs,\u201d said David Tze, NovoNutrients\u2019 CEO.<\/p>\n

The DOE funding
\nThe $300K in funding from DOE is key to move things forward for NovoNutrients because it will allow their modeling to be done at least a year earlier than they would have otherwise, according to Tze. \u201cThe alternative would have been to wait to initiate until after we\u2019d completed a Series A venture round.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sefton told The Digest that this grant has a big impact for next steps. \u201cConverting CO2 into new products through gas fermentation presents a number of complex engineering problems,\u201d said Sefton. \u201cThis grant will allow the gas fermentation experience we have at Novonutrients to be combined with the expertise and high performance computing capabilities of NREL to push forward the ability to model these systems. Application of this computational fluid dynamic modeling work will accelerate the development and deployment our CO2 to new product technology.\u201d<\/p>\n

A single NovoNutrients\u2019 commercial manufacturing plant will capture and convert over 200,000 tons\/yr of CO2 into over 100,000 tons\/yr of high-protein feed. Key to the rapid and widespread deployment of the technology is maximization of its productivity and energy efficiency.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s big news for aquaculture which is desperate to meet its increasing demand for fishmeal.<\/p>\n

What the future holds
\nIf we could look into a crystal ball, what would we see for NovoNutrients? Tze gave The Digest an exclusive glimpse into what their plans are for the future.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn a year, we should be able to talk about a specific market introduction plant site,\u201d said Tze. \u201cThat will be a facility where we\u2019d make commercial volumes of Novoceuticals and early volumes of Novomeal. Beyond the protein meal business, we are also building another product family on that same platform: Novoceuticals. That\u2019s what we\u2019ve dubbed our line of feed additives: enzymes, carotenoids, vitamins, and other high-value biochemicals relevant to animal nutrition. Some of that we can achieve through our IP for manipulating the membership of our consortium. Other products will require the application of synbio tools. We\u2019ll have both natural and GMO products in our line-up.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThree years after that, we anticipate being active with a mass production plant for a version of Novomeal that has significantly more nutritional value per ton than fishmeal, but sells for less. The feed markets will be mainstream aquaculture and pets, as well as specialty poultry and swine. Also, plant-based protein foodtech companies will be knocking on our door, looking for natural ingredients to replace the relatively expensive and low nutrition-soy and pea protein in their increasingly popular burgers and other vegetarian-friendly products.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bottom Line
\nWe see no reason why mobsters need to start feeding the fish again as NovoNutrients is getting closer to commercialization with NREL and DOE\u2019s help. It seems they found a win-win-win solution to the environmental issue of CO2 and converting it into something valuable and useful that we don\u2019t have enough of to meet aquaculture\u2019s demand. Even better is that they are already looking outside aquaculture and seeing the possibilities beyond.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Give a man a fish, you feed him for a day, but show him how to make fish food from CO2 and he\u2019s got fish for a lifetime. That\u2019s what NovoNutrients is working on to solve the huge global fishmeal supply\/demand issue in the aquaculture industry. You may have seen in the Digest\u2019s \u201cBreaking News\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","nova_meta_subtitle":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5572,5571],"tags":[14898,15965],"supplier":[8390,371,13875],"class_list":["post-65078","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bio-based","category-co2-based","tag-co2","tag-feed","supplier-biofuels-digest","supplier-national-renewable-energy-laboratory-nrel","supplier-novonutrients"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65078","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65078"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65078\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65078"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65078"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65078"},{"taxonomy":"supplier","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/supplier?post=65078"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}