Business Concentrates FOSSIL FUEL
Companies invest in aquaculture ingredients BASF, Cargill, Calysta advance alternatives to wild fish Cargill, BASF, and U.S. start-up Calysta are moving ahead with novel technologies for making proteins and oils for feeding farmed fish. Their goal is to reduce the use of wild fish in fish feed, a practice widely recognized
Wild fish in fish feed could be replaced with synthetic protein and oil from genetically modified crops. as unsustainable. Currently, about one-quarter of the 85 million metric tons of wild fish caught each year is used as food for cultivated species. California-based Calysta says it has raised money from several investors, including Cargill, to build its first commercial plant for making FeedKind, a fishmeal alternative con-
PETROCHEMICALS
Celebrating Sadara On Nov. 30 King Salman bin AbdulAziz Al Saud (right) of Saudi Arabia and Dow Chemical CEO Andrew N. Liveris (left) celebrated the inauguration of Sadara Chemical, a joint venture between Dow and Saudi Aramco. With 26 units for manufacturing plastics and specialty chemicals, Sadara is one of the world’s largest chemical complexes.
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C&EN | CEN.ACS.ORG | DECEMBER 5, 2016
taining essential amino acids and other nutritional ingredients for fish. Only long-chain omega-3 fatty acids have to be added to FeedKind to provide all the nutrients required by cultivated fish, Calysta says. Calysta’s bacterial fermentation process uses natural gas as a raw material. The nutrients that fish need are contained in the body of the bacteria, which are harvested with minimal processing. The plant will be at a Cargill site in Memphis, Tenn. It’s set to have an initial capacity of 20,000 metric tons per year, with the option of expansion to 200,000 metric tons. The facility is expected to come on-line in late 2018. Calysta plans to hire 75 staffers to operate it. “This venture is an important first step to deploying this technology globally,” says Calysta CEO Alan Shaw. In a separate move that appears to complement Calysta’s technology, Cargill and BASF are developing an omega-3-oil-rich species of canola that could yield oil to replace whats now obtained largely from wild fish. Cargill and BASF expect to introduce the omega-3-enhanced canola sometime after 2020. Trials conducted in Chile by Cargill show that the oil obtained from genetically engineered canola can be used to completely replace the omega-3 oils normally sourced from wild fish. The company adds that the enhanced canola oil could also one day be directly added to consumer foods.—ALEX SCOTT
Japanese firms eye shale gas revolution Petrochemical plants in Japan and the rest of Asia tend to use naphtha obtained from crude oil as their main feedstock, but the rise of U.S. natural gas production from shale has made naphtha less competitive. Chiba Chemicals Manufacturing is responding with plans to upgrade its facilities in Chiba, Japan, to process more propane gas instead. Created as a competitiveness-boosting measure in 2010 by merging plants run by Idemitsu Kosan and Mitsui Chemicals, Chiba Chemicals has a total ethylene production capacity of 920,000 metric tons per year. The joint venture is already able to process some propane at the plant that formerly belonged to Idemitsu. But Chiba Chemicals’ ability to use propane will quadruple after it completes facility upgrades at the site next year. By then, the unit will be able to rely on propane, supplied from an adjacent Idemitsu natural gas import terminal, for as much as half of its feedstock needs. Idemitsu and Mitsui decline to confirm the source of their propane, although it is likely to be the U.S. They also won’t disclose whether they will build facilities, such as a propane dehydrogenation unit, that would widen the narrow product slate that gas-fed facilities yield when compared with naphtha. Other companies in Asia are modifying plants, or building new ones, to consume gas instead of naphtha. For instance, in India, Reliance Industries plans to soon start consuming U.S. ethane at three petrochemical facilities in Dahej. Several petrochemical makers in Europe are also modifying plants to import U.S. ethane.—
JEAN-FRANÇOIS TREMBLAY
CREDIT: SHUTTERSTOCK (FISH); DOW CHEMICAL (KING SALMAN)
BIOTECHNOLOGY
