The Allonnia 1,4 D-Stroy™ 18-liter, stainless steel dispersion vessel.
A probable carcinogen found in 20% of US drinking water is set to be banished thanks to new optimized microbes that eat it up and spit out water and carbon dioxide instead.
The new product, Allonia 1,4 D-StroyTM, was announced today at SynBioBeta 2023.
Allonia 1,4 D-StroyTM is a microbe that Allonnia - a company dedicated to extracting value from waste - has optimized to break down 1,4-dioxane.
The ‘forever chemical’ - so-called because it does not easily break down in the environment - is a side product of industrial chemical processing.
The US Environmental Protection Agency lists it as one of the most prevalent emerging contaminants and a likely human carcinogen.
18 US states have already moved to regulate it, and the European Chemicals Agency added it to its Candidate List of Hazardous Chemicals in 2021 due to its “probable serious effects to human health and the environment.”
“The world has long been aware of the environmental and health risks associated with pervasive chemicals like 1,4-dioxane,” said Kent Sorenson, Chief Technology Officer at Allonnia.
“Allonia 1,4 D-StroyTM is a natural solution for removing one of the most prevalent emerging contaminants from drinking water that millions of people count on every day.”
A nature-based solution for bioremediation
Allonnia is part of a growing number of start-ups I recently wrote about that have been incubated by Ferment, a company creation studio that leverages Ginkgo Bioworks’ “iOS of synthetic biology” platform to drive new and useful products.
At SynBioBeta, Allonia’s CEO Nicole Richards will discuss their ongoing bioremediation work and the process of scaling biotech solutions like 1,4 D-Stroy from a petri dish to a commercial product.
She explained to me recently that Allonnia’s trick is to find microbes in sites where forever chemicals are highly concentrated and then supercharge their ability to digest them using synthetic biology.
“We start most times with a native organism that will survive in such an environment that has an affinity to do the job,” said Richards.
“Then we take it to engineering and get this organism no one has heard of before to do that job ten times better. We can do some pretty amazing things.”
Finding value in waste
Allonia’s solution is delivered onsite via a portable, 18-liter, stainless steel dispersion vessel, where precise doses of microbes mix with 1,4-dioxane and render it harmless.
A pilot program between Allonnia and engineering firm Stantec
It’s the second product to be released from Allonnia’s portfolio that targets forever chemicals. The other is Surface Active Foam Fractionation (SAFF®), which uses a combination of aeration and vacuum to ‘foam out’ 99% of PFAS molecules in water.
These are set to be joined by another eight products by 2030, including microbes that can siphon off the heavy metal waste from mining.
“We have really narrowed in on mining sustainability, emerging contaminants, and plastics upcycling,” said Richards.
“They're tough sustainability problems to solve, but there’s very good potential for biology to solve them. And there’s value in those solutions.”
One analysis suggests the global bioremediation market will be worth over $33 billion by 2032. Another estimate suggests a market value of $186 billion already in 2023.
“We see more government attention placed on environmental remediation solutions and techniques,” said Chuck Price, Chief Commercial Officer at Allonnia.
“Regulators and government officials can now consider solutions like this when passing environmental legislation or evaluating 1,4-dioxane limits, and private companies can reduce potential liabilities from contaminated water via a simple-to-use, natural solution.”
Thank you to Peter Bickerton for additional research and reporting on this article. I’m the founder of SynBioBeta and some of the companies I write about, including Allonnia, are sponsors of the SynBioBeta conference. For more content, you can subscribe to my weekly newsletter.
