Our goal is to produce methane from biomass and use the methane as energy.

Even today, there are established technologies to do the same using methanogens. However, there are various issues regarding cost-effectiveness, safety, and other operational methods.

We have come to the conclusion that we would like to consider the following items in order to recognize these issues so that there is no gap with the real world and to establish a technology that is acceptable to society.

・Current biomass processing

・Current methane fermentation technology

・The usefulness of our plan

・The safety of synthetic biology as perceived by society.

J Bio Food Recycle Co., Ltd.

An online meeting was held with J Bio Food Recycle Co., Ltd. to discuss current methane fermentation facilities using food waste, the utility of methane fermentation from food waste in urban areas, and the disposal of fermentation residues.

There are various types of food waste. In addition, its types and quantities change on a daily basis. Regarding these changes, we learned that the environment of the methane fermenter is stabilized by operating the methane fermenter with care for the moisture content and nutrient composition of food waste fed into the methane fermenter.

Food waste is generated mainly in urban areas, and electricity is also needed mainly in urban areas. However, since fermentation residues are often used for agriculture, there are advantages to locating in areas where agriculture is prevalent.　We found that a variety of factors need to be considered for methane fermentation facilities.

Before this meeting, we had considered only cattle manure as a feedstock for methane fermentation, but we became convinced that food waste can also be used as a feedstock for methane fermentation.

We confirmed that the results of our work to efficiently produce acetic acid from glucose will be applied to methanogenesis.This meeting was very helpful for us in our planning of the biogas plant.

Thermostable Enzyme Laboratory Co., Ltd.

An online meeting was held with Thermostable Enzyme Laboratory Co., Ltd. to discuss the utility of methane fermentation with synthetic biology, experimental techniques for genetic recombination of E. coli, and the reason why synthetic biology has not been accepted in Japan.

The project had been to be initiated with the investigation of efficient cellulose degradation. However, now that a wide variety of cellulases have been developed and were available at low cost, for technological improvement on cellulose degradation, the methods developed in this project needed significant advantages over off-the-shelf products. We realized that we should prioritize the improvement of the process after cellulose is degraded to glucose.

Efficient production of acetic acid from glucose was focused on, but there were a few things to note about the production of substances by E. coli. E. coli has a shell and secretion of substances required ingenuity. It was also not clear that E. coli worked in an environment that is acidified during the methane fermentation process. These problems have brought us innovative ideas

Also, the unique difficulty in accepting synthetic biology was in Japan, where fermented foods such as soy sauce and sake were actively produced without synthetic biology.

ITONO TAKARA co.,Ltd.

We had a face-to-face meeting with Katsutoshi Ura,the representative of ITONO TAKARA co.,Ltd., which was in the business of raising pigs.

The farmer was having trouble disposing of pig manure, which was only costing him money. To make effective use of the manure, they planned to install a biomass power generation facility using methane bacteria. However, the farmer had some doubts about the plan.

One of the doubts was the high frequency of methanogenic purchases. The calculation of the survival time of methanogens did not take into account the competition for survival among microorganisms, and additional methanogens were frequently required.

In response to this problem, we presented that methane fermentation with E. coli, which we were developing, was resistant to competition among microorganisms and could set a target for the frequency of additional microbial inputs.

The farm expressed concern about our ideas, linking them to synthetic biology and genetically modified plants. The farm expressed concern about our ideas, linking them to synthetic biology and genetically modified plants. This was because microorganisms were essential to the raising of pigs, for example, for the disposal of manure, and they feared that their environment would be threatened.

When we explained to them the scientific way to fear synthetic biology, they were interested in our ideas and gave us constant cooperation in the future.