EKB Technology Ltd has recently been spun out from the University of Oxford to commercialise a revolutionary Bioprocessing Technology developed in conjunction with C-Tech Innovation Ltd.
Bioprocessing technologies involve the use of biological systems such as plant and animal cells and micro organisms to modify, produce or purify chemical intermediates and are a critical part of the chemical industries £1.2tn annual manufacture and sale of almost all commercially important products.
Many of the processes used today by the chemical industry and the manufacturers of chemical intermediates produce large volumes of waste and are inefficient, utilise extreme temperature and pressure conditions and make extensive use of non-renewable petroleum-based feedstocks. In addition, the purification and packaging of the desired end product from the initial reaction mixture can account for as much as 70% of the overall cost of producing the desired chemical.
EKB Technology Ltd has a patented bioprocessing technology that could revolutionise the way many chemicals are manufactured today. The EKBâ„¢ Platform Technology can be used to eliminate the bulk of the stages involved in product purification and clean up by combining the production and recovery of chemicals into a single step process. The EKBâ„¢ Platform Technology has been demonstrated at the laboratory scale, for example to produce commercially important lactic acid. Lactic acid is a material widely used, material and has been used for example, in the manufacture of biodegradable polymers and in particular biodegradable plastics. Using the EKBâ„¢ Platform Technology, the production and purification of Lactic acid was achieved in a single step, drastically reducing the need for the currently required expensive and extensive downstream processing step used by manufacturers.
The EKBâ„¢ Platform Technology has the potential to reduce the amount of waste currently generated by many chemical manufacturing processes, allows the water used in chemical production to be recycled, reduce and in some instances eliminate the use of hazardous solvents from the manufacturing process as well as permitting cost effective manufacture of currently difficult to make speciality chemicals for use in drug synthesis.