Team:Brasil-USP Entrepreneurship
Degradation of Natural Rubber
Team Brasil-USP
Brasil-USP team's 2015 project is to develop an innovative
and sustainable solution for a significant environmental
problem:
accumulation of
waste tires
Current recycling techniques demand high energy consumption, and are completely overwhelmed by the annual amount of rubber waste. In addition, natural rubber degradation may take up to 1000 years.
We aim to accelerate this process by genetically engineering microorganisms to express and secrete two crucial enzymes for the degradation of natural rubber: RoxA (Rubber oxygenase) and Lcp (Latex clearing protein).
Tires and several other products, however, are composed by vulcanized rubber, which ensures its durability and increase its elasticity and strength. In this regard, for vulcanized rubber degradation, the project may include a pre-treatment, which uses Acidithiobacillus ferrooxidans, bacteria that naturally devulcanizes rubber. Both of these processes will be scaled up in bioreactors.
Both of these processes will be scaled up in bioreactors!
Our main circuit
Our project was designed to combat a serious environmental problem worldwide: the accumulation of rubber products waste. For this end, we designed a simple DNA circuit to be expressed in a model bacteria, E.coli. The designed DNA circuit will co-express two essential enzymes for rubber degradation, Lcp and RoxA, followed by their exportation – guaranteeing maximum contact with the threated materials. Both of these enzymes interact with the polymers composing natural rubber, generating several products. Between these, the most abundant is ODTD, a triisoprene unit that can be transformed into a high value fuel. Therefore, our project doesn’t only removes rubber waste from the environment, but it also turns it into a product with high aggregate value.
Overview
Although there are plenty of alternatives to scrap tires, it keeps being an environmental and economical problem to the society. Pneumatic producers are responsible for waste tire collection and destination to recycling companies which transforms it into products such as oil, fuel, boots, carpets, asphalt and others. But it is not enough. Specialists and owners of tire industry seek for an alternative that could valorize the transformed residue and really solve the problem. We see our technology as a potential solution. Different from what is done nowadays, we aim to transform the tire into a high valued new products: jet fuel and fine chemistry industry supplies free of sulfur and pollutant gases. We aim to change the cycle of the rubber and the tire, inserting them in a circular economy that is sustainable forever. As the definition of Synthetic Biology already says, our goal is to design and construct biological machines for a useful purpose. We want to be useful and return to the society the application of our project through a Startup. In the last four months we have been in contact with professors, technology companies, pneumatic industry, lawyer, accountant, intellectual property specialists to better understand our business. We consolidated a business plan focused on raising financial investment for a pilot plant composed of two bioreactors and one reactor
And this is Brasil-USP Team, from University of São Paulo!