Technologies for cost-effectively making single-cell protein at an industrial scale

Mission

Our mission is to improve world health by large-scale conversion of sugars, starches and seed oils (vegetable oils) to single-cell protein with balanced protein and fats for human, animal and fish consumption. We believe we can do this at very low capital and operating expenses (CAPEX and OPEX) at any scale, from 500 tons per year (single module) to many millions of tons per year (multiple modules).

Health Science

The scientific community recognizes that one of the most serious health problems in the world is the large amount of carbohydrate in most people’s diets - consisting of sugars and starches. This problem is especially acute in the USA and India, which have a big problem with Type-2 diabetes and other related metabolic disorders.

The scientific community also recognizes that other serious health problems are caused by too much consumption of seed oils, which are rich in Omega-6 fatty acids and poor in Omega-3 fatty acids. These health problems are caused by inflammation and include heart problems and dementia.

Market Opportunity

It is clear that there is an oversupply of sugars, starches and seed oils in the world, and this oversupply is increasing because of the reduced demand for bioethanol and biodiesel caused by electrification of transport.

The future oversupply of sugars, starches and seed oils is a golden opportunity to improve world health.

Technical Solution

The key technical challenge is to cost-effectively produce single-cell protein with balanced protein and Omega-3 fatty acids. We believe this can be solved with a foam fermenter that performs continuous aerobic fermentation at high concentrations of yeasts while using an innovative contamination control technique.

We are using two yeasts - Candida utilis (Torula) with sugars and hydrolyzed starches and Yarrowia lipolytica with seed oils. Both of these yeasts have a long history of being “Generally Recognized As Safe” (GRAS) for human, animal and fish consumption.

Economics Examples

Each module fits in a 20 ft. shipping container and is prefabricated before site delivery. We anticipate a CAPEX of $50K-$100K per module and an operating profit of $200K-$400K/year per module.

Healthy people require about 70 g of protein per day. For example, India has 1.4 billion people, requiring about 36 million tons of protein per year.

Given that a single module produces about 500 tons of protein per year, India requires about 72,000 modules, costing a total of about $3.6 billion in capital (one time), 72 million tons/year of sugar and 7 million tons/year of urea.

India produces 37 million tons of sugar per year and 146 million tons of rice per year, so about 40 million tons of rice would need to be hydrolyzed to glucose per year to produce enough additional sugar in India to produce enough protein for the whole of India.

Given that the market price of sugar in India is about $650/ton and the market price of rice in India is about the same, and the market price of urea in India is about $250/ton, making 36 million tons of protein would cost about $3.6 billion of capital (one time), $46.8 billion/year for sugars and $1.75 billion/year for urea. Electricity and cooling would add another 10%.

This results in a cost of about $1,480/ton to make 36 million tons of high quality protein in India.

In Russia, the domestic price of sugar is about $385/ton and the domestic market of urea is about $320/ton. This results in a cost of about $1,100/ton to make 36 million tons of the same high quality protein in Russia. However, Russia only produces 6.6 million tons of sugar per year, but also produces 91 million tons of wheat per year that could be hydrolyzed to glucose. Currently less than 1 million tons/year of glucose syrup is produced.

In Brazil, the domestic price of sugar is about $200/ton and the domestic market of urea is about $300/ton. This results in a cost of about $500/ton to make 36 million tons of the same high quality protein in Brazil. However, Brazil only produces about 40 million tons of sugar per year, but also produces 125 million tons of corn per year that can be hydrolyzed to glucose.

Contamination Control

Bacterial contamination is often the biggest technical problem when using yeasts and green algae in industrial-scale fermentation to produce ethanol, single-cell protein and Omega-3 lipids (including DHA).

We’ve invented two patent-pending technologies for preventing contamination by using urea as the sole nitrogen source along with titanium heat exchangers to reduce leaching of nickel. No acid wash or antibiotics are needed to prevent 100% of all bacterial contamination.

The main yeasts and green algae we are using with these inventions are Saccharomyces cerevisiae, Candida utilis, Yarrowia lipolytica, Chlorella sorokiniana and Chlorella vulgaris.

Foam Fermentation

Our main invention is an aerobic fermenter that uses foam to provide large amounts of oxygen to microorganisms fermenting in the liquid part of foam.

This was first widely used at the sulfite paper mill Zellstofffabrik Waldhof near Mannheim, Germany between 1939 and 1949. This type of fermenter is commonly called a Waldhof Fermenter.

Our invention improves on the Waldhof fermenter in several significant ways, and when used with our contamination control invention allows continuous production of single-cell protein for months at a time.

Omega-3 Lipids

Omega-3 and Omega-6 lipids are essential to human life and are only provided in our diet by plants, animals, some yeasts and some algae.

When people consume too much Omega-6 lipids compared to Omega-3 lipids, people are more likely to have heart problems, high blood pressure, dementia and many other health problems.

The optimal ratio of Omega-6 to Omega-3 is between 2:1 and 1:2, but western diets usually have a ratio of 20:1 or worse, leading to poor health.

Our foam fermenter can produce Torula (Candida utilis) yeast or green algae with large amounts of Omega-3 lipids, which has been shown to be very nutritious for fish and chicken, and thus makes a more valuable fish and chicken product.

Protein from Natural Gas

The world’s population will increase from 8 Billion to 10 Billion in the next 20 years and an additional 80 g protein per person per day is needed.

This means that the world will need at least another 160 Mt/year of additional protein.

The world has a lot of low-cost natural gas.

It’s possible to make low-cost protein for fish feed and chicken feed from natural gas by fermenting Methylococcus capsulatus.

A foam fermenter is the most efficient way to produce this protein at a large scale because it can do nitrogen fixing from the atmosphere, resulting in contamination control and thus allowing efficient continuous fermentation.

Evolution, not revolution

We are developing technologies for evolving existing fermentation plants, especially in Brazil, USA, EU, India and China, and for future evolution of these fermentation plants to produce single-cell protein from sugars.

Our main technology for existing fermentation plants is a less expensive contamination control technique, which instead of adding things to the fermenter to prevent bacterial growth, it removes something from the fermenter (nickel ions). This eliminates the need for sugarcane ethanol plants to use a sulphuric acid wash when recycling yeast and eliminates the need for US corn ethanol plants to use antibiotics.

Winning the competition

We believe that the best way for a bioethanol plant to survive and prosper in a declining market is to be more innovative than its competitors. In a declining market, only the most efficient plants will survive. We suggest that the best way for a bioethanol plant to innovate is to:

  1. Change to continuous fermentation with yeast recycling, using our contamination control technology. This requires little capital - just enough to change heat exchangers from stainless steel to titanium. It allows recycling yeast without acid treatment and removes the need for antibiotics.

  2. Add on foam fermenters to allow producing both bioethanol and protein from the same sugars. This gives time to develop the market for proteins.

  3. Expand the capacity of the plant to produce more protein from sugars.

How does it work?

At the heart of CelloFuel's groundbreaking technology lies our portable biomass refinery, ingeniously designed to fit within a standard 20 or 40-foot shipping container. This compact yet powerful system is the key to our sustainable production process, transforming carbohydrates and methane into valuable single-cell proteins.

A fermentation plant can be scaled up to tens of thousands of CelloFuel containers, allowing cost-effective fermentation at a large scale.

Who are we?

Hamrick Engineering was founded in 2013 by Edward B. Hamrick.

Edward (Ed) Hamrick graduated with honors from the California Institute of Technology (CalTech) with a degree in Engineering and Applied Science. He worked for three years at NASA/JPL on the International Ultraviolet Explorer and Voyager projects and worked for ten years at Boeing as a Senior Systems Engineer and Engineering Manager. Subsequently, Ed worked for five years at Convex Computer Corporation as a Systems Engineer and Systems Engineering Manager. Ed has been a successful entrepreneur for the past 25 years.

Alex Ablaev, MBA, PhD is Sr. Worldwide Business Developer. Alex previously worked for Genencor's enzymatic hydrolysis division, and is the President of the Russian Biofuels Association as well as General Manager of NanoTaiga, a company in Russia using CelloFuel technologies in Russia.

Alan Pryce, CEng is Chief Engineer. Alan is an experienced professional mechanical engineer - Chartered Engineer (CEng) – Member of the Institute of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE) - with 10+ years’ experience in the mechanical design and project management of factory automation projects in UK and European factories. He has been a Senior Design Consultant and project manager for over 30 years working for Frazer-Nash Consultancy Ltd involved with many design and build contracts in the military, rail, manufacturing, and nuclear industries.

Maria Kharina, PhD, is Sr. Microbiology Scientist. Maria has a PhD in Biotechnology and is a researcher with 10+ years of experience. Maria was a Fulbright Scholar in the USA from 2016-2017.

Dr. Ryan P. O'Connor (www.oconnor-company.com) provides intellectual property strategy consulting and patent prosecution. Dr. O'Connor holds a degree in Chemical Engineering from University of Notre Dame and a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from University of Minnesota. He has filed more than 1000 U.S. and PCT applications and is admitted to the Patent Bar, United States Patent & Trademark Office.

Presentations

Ed Hamrick made a presentation at GrainTek 2023 in Moscow (English) (Russian). You can watch the presentation here.

Ed Hamrick made a presentation at ProteinTek 2023 in Moscow (English) (Russian). You can watch the presentation here.

We were honored by the presence of Nina Borisovna Gradova (Wikipedia) at our presentation at ProteinTek 2023. She was a leader of the Soviet Union’s successful projects growing single-cell protein on an industrial scale from 1970-1990 and is a legendary microbiologist in Russia with many awards and patents related to making single-cell protein, especially technologies for growing protein from methane. She is also the author of many textbooks in this field.

Her first patent application in this field was in 1970 and her most recent in 2020, a remarkable 50 years of intellectual progress in the field.

She even made some complimentary remarks about our foam fermenter during the question/answer session of the presentation.

Hamrick Engineering Patent Portfolio