Cemvita demonstrates 75,000-liter industrial scale-up of FermOil™ platform using crude glycerin
- Cemvita
- 10 hours ago
- 2 min read
Cemvita announced June 3 the successful completion of a 75,000-liter (19,813-gallon) industrial-fermentation campaign at Bio Base Europe Pilot Plant, achieving target technical metrics for the production of FermOil™ from industrial crude glycerin.
Cemvita said the milestone validates the scalability of its biomanufacturing platform.
Over the past several years, Cemvita advanced the process through multiple scale-up stages, progressing from bench-scale systems through 2-liter, 30-liter, 1,500-liter and 15,000-liter fermentations before successfully reaching the 75,000-liter demonstration campaign.
The company’s platform converts crude glycerin, a byproduct of biodiesel production, into renewable natural oil (RNO), creating value from an underutilized industrial residual stream.
“Successfully reaching 75,000 liters while achieving our set target metrics demonstrates that carbon-rich effluent streams like crude glycerin can become a scalable foundation for the next generation of sustainable fuels and biobased materials,” said Moji Karimi, CEO at Cemvita. “Biology is becoming infrastructure.”
Luciano Zamberlan, the vice president of engineering at Cemvita, added, “This campaign showed that we had the right partner to scale FermOil™ with confidence. Across multiple vessel runs, the fermentation-control strategy remained stable, and the results were consistent all the way from 30 liters to 75,000 liters. That level of reproducibility is exactly what gives us confidence as we move toward commercial deployment.”
Hendrik Waegeman of Bio Base Europe Pilot Plant said, “We are proud to support innovative companies like Cemvita in scaling breakthrough industrial-biotechnology solutions. Successfully operating at the 75,000-liter scale using a feedstock such as crude glycerin highlights both the maturity of the technology and the quality of the scale-up execution achieved by the Cemvita team.”
FermOil™ is an RNO designed for compatibility with existing hydroprocessed esters and fatty acids (HEFA) and coprocessing infrastructure used to produce sustainable aviation fuel (SAF).
The feedstock, crude glycerin, is recognized under the EU Renewable Energy Directive (RED III) Annex IX Part A, positioning the platform within Europe’s growing advanced feedstock ecosystem.
Cemvita is currently advancing commercial deployment discussions with strategic partners across Brazil, the EU and the U.K.
