Fermentation-Based Fatty Acids to Boost Sustainability and Supply Chain Resiliency
20 September 2022 – “The time is now to transition to a more circular economy, a more circular chemical industry.” That is the conviction of Niels van Stralen, director and co-founder of ChainCraft, a young Dutch company with precisely that mission.
ChainCraft has developed and begun commercializing feed-grade fatty acids made from fermentation, rather than from the petrochemicals or oleochemicals (which are largely palm-based). According to van Stralen and his colleague Jeroen van Dorp, commercial director, this move to fermentation-based production is much more sustainable.
“Compared to the petrochemical and oleochemicals processes, it’s less energy-intensive, which leads to a significantly lower carbon footprint.”
Moreover, there is also the aspect of upcycling, or turning low-value residue streams into a high value product that would otherwise require virgin resources to produce. “We start with a very low-grade feedstock which is now being used mainly for biogas production… and we create more value out of these streams, we make better use of them in terms of sustainability.”
