AGAE to produce rhamnolipid biosurfactant from new facility in Asia

AGAE Technologies, a US-based leader in rhamnolipid production and technology, with its partners, recently opened the largest retrofitted manufacturing plant complex in Asia. This 41,000-square-feet complex can produce over 1,000 metric tons of rhamnolipids annually, with room to add production lines as demand rises.

AGAE has been at the forefront of rhamnolipid production technologies since 2011. The company’s earlier success in building a custom modular fermentation pilot plant in 2020 in the United States offers flexibility in terms of configuration and production settings.

Through an interdisciplinary approach at the pilot plant scale, AGAE solved the long-standing challenges in rhamnolipid production: foam control, low yields, and high costs for downstream processing. Since then, AGAE has actively looked for partners to scale up domestically and internationally. Its efforts resulted in the successful completion and operation of the retrofitted plant complex.

Scaling up to industrial production of rhamnolipids presented a range of technical challenges. Managing the flow of thousands of cubic meters of compressed air, quickly recycling dozens of cubic meters of ever-increasing foam, and safely controlling the corresponding pressure are just a few of the problems they’ve now solved. At the same time, all filters, valves, sealings, tubes/pipes, and pumps had to withstand the above engineering challenges.

“Completing this plant complex was only possible because of the cutting-edge foam control technologies and the data we gathered from years of trial and error at our benchtop bioreactor and fermentation pilot plant,” said Mr. Garrett Holzwarth, a fermentation scientist at AGAE. With our proprietary technologies, we have the competence and confidence needed to build a full-scale manufacturing plant complex in the US.

Rhamnolipid is a member of glycolipid biosurfactant family. It has better water solubility than Sophorolipid, according to the company. The renewable natural product is practically non-toxic and completely biodegradable. Its mildness and other skin-beneficial properties are well-suited for personal and home care products. Rhamnolipid can be used in many other industries as well, such as cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, therapeutics, oral care, agriculture, environmental remediation, and enhanced oil recovery.

With this plant complex, AGAE not only boosts its ability to supply competitively priced, high-quality rhamnolipid products in large volumes but also plays a major role in expanding the use of eco-friendly rhamnolipid biosurfactant globally.