Have you ever heard of biomanufacturing? In fact, you may have been exposed to bio-manufactured products in your life. Hepatitis B vaccine, insulin, hyaluronic acid, collagen, fuel ethanol, etc., are all products produced using biomanufacturing technology. Biomanufacturing is considered to have the potential to lead the "fourth industrial revolution", and the market size will reach the trillion level, which is a hot spot for competition in countries around the world. China has also listed biomanufacturing as a strategic emerging industry for key development, which is one of the important means to enhance new quality productivity.
A popular fish feed protein on the market, with a high nutritional value, with a crude protein content of more than 80%, it is surprising that it is produced from the industrial exhaust gas produced during the steelmaking process of the steel mill.
Shougang LanzaP, a subsidiary of Shougang Group, is the first company in the world to produce feed protein and fuel ethanol from the tail gas of the steel industry. Ten years ago, in order to deal with Shougang's industrial exhaust gas, the company introduced gas fermentation technology to China. However, this technology has only been proven in the laboratory and is still a long way from industrial application. After years of technical research, Shougang LanzaTech finally opened up the whole system process to achieve mass production.
How does the seemingly magical operation of making industrial exhaust gas into feed protein work?
Yang Yan, deputy general manager of Hebei Shoulang New Energy Technology:"First of all, the industrial exhaust gas is transported to the gas pretreatment section through the pipeline, and after simple compression and gas purification, it is transported from the pipeline to the core fermentation section, and the gas enters from the bottom of the fermentation tank to the top, and the one-way journey is only tens of seconds. ”
Next, the industrial exhaust gas is transformed into protein and ethanol by a strain called Clostridium ethanol. During the entire production process, Clostridium ethanol is the work, and the staff only needs to monitor it. Shougang LanzaTech uses biomanufacturing technology. The so-called biological manufacturing refers to the manufacturing process of using the physiological metabolic functions or catalytic functions of living organisms such as bacteria, cells, and enzymes to produce chemicals and polymer materials required by human beings on a large scale through industrial fermentation processes. It is an advanced production method with industrial biotechnology as the core.
Tan Tianwei, President of Beijing University of Chemical Technology and Academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering:"What's the big focus? One is to use organisms for production, and the biggest feature of organisms is the reaction process, which is normal temperature and pressure; The second feature is that renewable raw materials can be used for the transformation of living organisms. ”
Biomanufacturing is a new production technology, which integrates biology, chemistry, engineering and other technologies, and has the characteristics of clean, efficient and renewable, and has the potential to change the world's industrial pattern in the fields of energy, agriculture, chemical industry and medicine. Experts say that biomanufacturing will bring about major changes in at least three aspects: reconstructing the production route of traditional chemicals, replacing the traditional way of obtaining natural products, and subverting the traditional agricultural breeding model.
Liu **, Secretary of the Party Committee and Vice President of CCID Research Institute of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology"Biomanufacturing is different from the traditional physical and chemical manufacturing mode, biomanufacturing innovates the material production mode, and uses organisms as the production medium, which will bring a series of great changes to the transformation of the manufacturing industry; In addition, biomanufacturing uses renewable biomass as raw material, which is also very critical for the manufacturing industry to achieve the dual carbon goal. ”
China has a large number of industrial tail gas resources. According to expert estimates, iron and steel metallurgy, petrochemical refining, cement and other industries have an annual output of more than one trillion cubic meters of industrial exhaust gas, and if 50% of them are used, they can produce 5 million tons of feed protein annually and reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 1200 million tons, saving 1600 million tons, saving 400 million mu of cultivated land.
China not only has a large amount of industrial exhaust gas, but also a lot of agricultural and forestry waste, which is also very suitable for use with biotechnology. Bioethanol is commonly known as alcohol, and at present, China mainly uses corn, wheat and other grains as raw materials to produce through fermentation process. In Heilongjiang alone, 2.3 million tonnes of bioethanol is produced annually from grain. However, with the implementation of this cellulosic ethanol demonstration project, the situation of producing ethanol from grain will be broken. This is the country's first industrialized demonstration project for the production of bioethanol from straw in Hailun City, Suihua, Heilongjiang Province.
SDIC Advanced Biomass Fuel (Hailun)** Chief Engineer Li Chunling:"The process of producing second-generation ethanol from straw is like this, after the straw is wrapped into the factory, it is first purified, impurified, and then popped like popcorn, the structure is burst, and then hydrolyzed into fermentable sugar by adding biological enzymes, and then it is turned into alcohol with yeast. ”
The traditional production of bioethanol is mainly obtained by fermenting starch-rich grains such as corn and wheat, and then using the sugar to produce ethanol. The advantage of this technology is that it is difficult to achieve and easy to achieve, but the disadvantage is that it consumes grain, and there is a phenomenon of competing with people for grain and land, which affects national food security. SDIC Biotech uses straw to produce sugar, and then uses sugar to produce ethanol.
After more than 10 years of technical research, this company has finally achieved mass production. Although the current production capacity of this demonstration project is only 30,000 tons, and the consumption of about 150,000 tons of straw, its breakthrough is of great significance. According to statistics, the amount of straw produced in the country in 2021 is 86.5 billion tons. Therefore, if this technology is fully rolled out, it will be a major revolution in traditional technology.
Li Chunling:"Through technology research and development and independent innovation, the transformation of the structure of non-grain raw materials has finally been realized. The advantage is that resource-rich agricultural and forestry wastes can be used, which are sustainable, renewable and recyclable, and through the use of these agricultural and forestry wastes, carbon emissions can be reduced and environmental pollution can be improved. ”
China is a big country of industry and agriculture, with a lot of resource consumption and corresponding emissions, so it is necessary to solve this problem through advanced technology such as biological manufacturing and turn waste into treasure. It is crucial to building new quality productivity and promoting the development of the economy towards green, sustainable and high-quality development.
As one of the means to improve the productivity of new quality, biotechnology has been designated as a strategic emerging industry in China. To this end, China has formulated a number of policies and measures. In 2022, the issuance of the "14th Five-Year Plan for the Development of the Bioeconomy" marks the official introduction of China's first five-year plan for the bioeconomy. The "Planning" clearly proposes to cultivate and expand the four pillar industries of medical health, biological agriculture, bioenergy and biological environmental protection, and biological information.
Since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, great achievements have been made in the development of China's bioeconomy, the sub-sectors have gradually increased, and the scale of core industries has grown rapidly. Industrial clusters have been formed in the Yangtze River Delta region, and there are a large number of backbone enterprises in North China and Central China. With the strong support of the state, a number of new technologies have been born, which lead the development direction of future biomanufacturing and redefine the future production model. At the Tianjin Institute of Industrial Biotechnology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, on July 24, 2018, a completely new technology was preliminarily completed.
When it meets iodine, it turns blue, which is a distinctive feature of starch. However, the starch used by researchers does not come from plants such as corn and potatoes, but from carbon dioxide.
This is an exciting technology, in 2021, the Tianjin Institute of Industrial Biotechnology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences announced that it was the first in the world to realize the artificial total synthesis of carbon dioxide to starch, and the relevant results were published in the international academic journal "Science" in September of that year, and the results were selected as the top ten advances in Chinese science in 2021 and the top ten advances in life sciences in China in 2021. It achieves a breakthrough in creating organic matter from inorganic matter. This technology far surpasses corn and other crops in terms of energy efficiency and rate of starch synthesis, opening a window for the industrial production of starch and providing a new idea for the synthesis of complex molecules using carbon dioxide as raw material.
Although the technology has proven successful in laboratory conditions, it is still some way from being truly industrialized, so scientists are working hard to break through the last technical barriers, and once successful, the market will be unlimited.
Cai Tao, researcher at Tianjin Institute of Industrial Biotechnology, Chinese Academy of Sciences:"On the one hand, we can turn a lot of waste carbon dioxide into treasure, which may have an impact on the environment; On the other hand, starch can be synthesized in industrial workshops, saving 80 to 90 percent of land and fresh water. ”
Biomanufacturing has proven to fundamentally change the production model of traditional manufacturing. Using new production methods such as biology + medicine, biology + chemicals, biology + energy, biology + light industry, a large number of new products have been born, such as recombinant protein drugs, bio-aviation kerosene, biodegradable plastics, etc., and biomanufacturing is considered to have the potential to lead the "fourth industrial revolution", and the future prospects are very broad. According to **, the global biomanufacturing output value is close to 30 trillion US dollars.
In the future, with the further breakthrough progress of biotechnology, biomanufacturing is also expected to expand to mining, metallurgy, electronic information, environmental protection and other fields, and the development prospects are very broad, becoming an important engine of economic growth.
Liu**:"In the next step, the state will strengthen a series of deployments from the policy, enterprise and industry levels to promote the development of the biomanufacturing industry. In terms of policy, the relevant departments of the state are studying and formulating the top-level planning documents for biomanufacturing at the national level, and in terms of industry, the relevant departments of the state will increase the investment of financial funds, and lay out a number of biomanufacturing company platforms in different fields and regions; In terms of enterprises, the relevant state departments will support enterprises to strengthen the innovation and research and development of core industrial strains and key enzyme preparations, enhance the ability of independent innovation, and promote the continuous emergence of innovative achievements. ”
As the focus of enhancing economic competitiveness, biomanufacturing is also another important starting point for China to promote the construction of a manufacturing power after green manufacturing and intelligent manufacturing. As a new quality of productivity, the biomanufacturing industry has unlimited business opportunities, and the prelude to the development of this industry in China has just begun. At present, the added value of China's core biomanufacturing industry accounts for only 2 percent of the industrial added value4%, there is a lot of room for improvement. China has a good foundation for biomanufacturing, coupled with a series of policies to boost, China's biomanufacturing industry will become more and more competitive on this new track.
*: CCTV "Focus Interview".