Advantages of trioxane

Trioxane acts as an ideal C1-fermentation feedstock, which can be used just like sugar in an existing industrial-scale fermentation lay-out. A switch from sugar to trioxane and vice versa can easily be made (feedstock flexibility).

Trioxane is available as a clean stream for fermentations, which is very relevant in view of downstream processing of bioproducts.

Very limited bacterial contaminations during fermentations.

As trioxane is derived from methanol, an external expert opinion was obtained for the competing utilization of methanol. In the report to FSU, it is stated: “in many cases, methanol is not a suitable feedstock for large-scale fermentation processes. Key to this conclusion is problems with massive oxygen transfer preventing high product titres in the fermentation broth, inherently resulting in poor economics”.

Importantly, genes involves in trioxane degradation can be transferred into a broad range of existing production strains such as E. coli. Hence, processes are not depending on specialized methylotrophic organisms, which are more difficult to handle.