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2025 AOCS Annual Meeting & Expo.

Featured Session

Featured Session: Harnessing Vegetable Oil Waste - Circular Economy in Action

Valorizing waste streams to enhance sustainability and economics in microbial oil production

Monday, April 28, 2025
9:15 AM – 9:35 AM PST
Room: B117-119
Abstract:

Driven by demand for more sustainable products, research and capital investment has been committed to developing microbially produced oils. While researchers have shown oligeanous yeasts and other microbes can produce low carbon footprint oils by leveraging waste streams as energy sources, previous analyses have not fully explored the quantity of available waste streams and in turn economy-of-scale enabled on capital operating expenses. We analysed a variety of scenarios and found that reaching price parity with large-scale commodity oils (e.g., palm oil, high-oleic cooking oils, biofuels feedstock oils, lauric acid) is not possible today and unlikely even under aggressive future assumptions about strain productivity. Instead, commercial production must be targeted at end markets where sustainability-conscious consumers are willing to pay price premiums. Supply of feedstocks into this process is also a critical consideration and likely needs to rely on other agriculture supply chains.