Biodegradable Polymers from Methane: An Industrial Fermentation Scale-up Journey

Mango Materials is a California-based start-up that uses methane gas to produce biodegradable biopolymers that can be economically and functionally competitive with conventional, oil-based plastics. Mango Materials produces powder or pellets of poly-hydroxyalkanoate (PHA), a valuable product that can be converted into a variety of high-margin or high-volume, environmentally friendly goods such as textiles, injection-molded packaging or other products, or films. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas often produced as a byproduct at sites such as wastewater treatment plants, landfills, and agricultural facilities. In this process, biogas methane is directly utilized as a feedstock for bacteria, which produce PHA intracellularly in a fermentation process. The PHA is then separated from the non-polymer cell mass and used in a variety of downstream applications. This presentation will discuss Mango Materials' origins and scale-up journey as well as the path to full-scale commercialization of its technology.

Allison Pieja is the co-founder and CTO of Mango Materials, a start-up company that produces biodegradable polymers from methane gas. She received her Ph.D. in Civil & Environmental Engineering from Stanford, with a focus on selection of microbes for the production of poly-hydroxyalkanoate (PHA) from methane. Allison received her B.S.E. from Princeton University in Civil & Environmental Engineering and graduated with a Certificate in Engineering Biology. She has contributed to multiple patents and publications in the PHA field. At Mango Materials, she leads scale-up and process optimization of Mango Materials' process to produce biopolymer from waste methane gas. She has been the PI on grants awarded from NSF and NASA, investigating optimization and scale-up of methane-to-PHA on Earth and beyond.