Last year, Solugen received one of the biggest Biden-era loans to biomanufacturing to pursue its mission of replacing oil and natural gas in chemical manufacturing.
Solugen’s major innovation is a manufacturing tool named Bioforge that blends metal catalysts with enzymes to produce industrial chemicals from plants. We profile the company from its beginnings.
Minerals and biology meet
Since 2016, Texas-headquartered Solugen has been in the business of sustainable biochemicals, specialising in hydrogen peroxide and its byproducts glucaric acid and gluconic acid.
Although obscure to most consumers, hydrogen peroxide is produced in huge quantities globally. As a ‘chemical intermediate’, it’s a substance that recurs across disparate industries and diverse materials – from textile, paper and food to chemicals, plastics and pharmaceuticals. One estimate says the market will reach $6.3 billion by 2026.
Yet more than any particular molecule it makes, it is Solugen’s proprietary manufacturing platform that has garnered attention from investors. Solugen offers a new biobased manufacturing process which allows hydrogen peroxide production from plants rather than petroleum or natural gas.
Under Solugen’s process, engineered biobased enzymes and then metal catalysts are used to treat feedstock derived from plants. The final result is indistinguishable from the product that comes out of the conventional manufacturing process.
A new way of making chemicals
Solugen’s approach to producing hydrogen peroxide is said to be less energy-intensive than conventional manufacturing routes, according to the company, because it unlocks plant-based feedstocks.
Right now, most hydrogen peroxide is made from methane or natural gas (providing the hydrogen), which is then reacted with oxygen under high heat. The company also says its process is safer and less toxic.
The renewable feedstocks unlocked by Solugen’s metal-enzyme treatment process are not the only factor in lowering the environmental impacts of the new process. The fact that Solugen’s process converts plant feedstock directly into the target chemicals also matters.
This direct route eliminates the many waste products that come out of the chemical manufacturing process today. Solugen also claims its metal-enzyme treatment process also results in yields of target chemicals that are considerably higher than competitors that draw on petroleum.
Apart from environmental advantages, Solugen’s manufacturing process opens the door to scale. Under the conventional process, large plants are needed to cope with the safety pressures of working with high heat and flammable inputs.
Solugen’s process works with water and at room temperature, which can cut operating costs and space requirements and pave the way to lower prices for green chemicals. Smaller plants also mean modular facilities that their customers can fit out right next to their operations. Decentralised chemical production becomes possible.
The power of biology
Solugen’s metal-enzyme chemical production tool relies on advances in biotech and gene editing. Rapid progress in these fields, as well as falling costs, allow producers to fine-tune the chemical behaivours of biological materials to meet precise manufacturing needs.
Solugen designs its enzymes, which they enhance using genetic engineering. This way, these biological compounds can be made highly optimised for specific chemical tasks.
The process of generating highly efficient enzymes for specific chemical tasks is made easier by using AI-filtered libraries that help screen different enzyme variants. The company then contracts out the actual production of these enzymes to specialist companies.
Beginnings
The commercial idea of blending metals and enzymes in one biomanufacturing pathway came directly out of the graduate research that Solugen co-founders Sean Hunt and Gaurub Chakrabarti were doing back in the early 2010s.
Hunt’s PhD research at MIT focused on the synthesis of peroxide with metal catalysts.
It was during his studies that he met his eventual co-founder Gaurab Chakrabarti. Chakrabarti was studying enzymology and cancer biology and discovered an enzyme system that could make hydrogen peroxide during his graduate research.
Eventually, the pair began to explore whether combining their interests could result in a more efficient hydrogen peroxide pathway than the one that already existed.
Looking back on their early meetings, Hunt has described how at first, he was sceptical about the industrial usefulness of the biological enzymes that Chakrabarti was interested in.
Hunt knew about the power of enzymes in chemical reactions but assumed they were too complex, finicky, and costly to work with at a commercial scale.
Hunt’s initial wariness of working with biomaterials is perhaps shared by many industrialists and consumers who still assume that biobased replacements for fossil-based processes do not perform as well Solugen’s industrial successes since that time prove that this is far from the case.
Sensory deprivation kept Solugen afloat
Hunt quickly came around to the idea that custom-engineered enzymes can be powerful and scaleable solutions to production biobased chemicals. Still, the company had to prove itself commercially and secure its first orders.
After its founding, one of the first customers that Solugen sold its hydrogen peroxide to were US float spas. These are therapeutic spas where people can go to be suspended in the warm waters of sensory deprivation chambers.
Industrial chemicals may seem out of place in a spa setting but the chemical is an easy way to keep the flotation tanks clean. A stream of initial orders came in from the small and close-knit US float spa industry, showing the company that they might have a chance at staying afloat financially.
At this time, Solugen was just a startup on a shoestring. The founders recount how they had to keep up production to meet hydrogen peroxide orders from spas, they had to sleep on the floor next to their DIY reactor through the night.
2017 was a critical year for the company. In March, it secured the $4 million in seed funding needed to continue.
Major revenue growth came through multiple contracts with the oil and gas industry. Solugen turns byproducts of making hydrogen peroxide – glucaric and gluconic acid – into products that extract iron contaminants from oil. These organic acids also treat wastewater, increase crop fertiliser uptake, and control cement curing, allowing Solugen to enter a range of industries.
Bioforge Minnesota
By 2024, Solugen had broken ground on its latest new facility in Minnesota, which it says will have a production capacity of 120 kilotonnes per annum, estimated to create 50 manufacturing jobs once it hits full production.
Solugen’s Bioforge facility in Marshall is located right next to a facility owned by ADM, one of the world’s biggest agribusiness entities and food commodities traders. The co-location is no accident. Solugen has a partnership with ADM and will source dextrose from the company’s corn processing complex next door. The dextrose will be the key feedstock in Solugen’s manufacturing process.
Solugen has also taken advantage of its location in Minnesota, which has for years been developing biobased industries to increase the value of its agricultural sector. Indicating how Minnesota has become a prime location for the biobased industries, the state was home to half of the 160 projects that bagged funds from the US Department of Agriculture in August 2024, part of Biden’s support for clean energy projects.
Riding the onshoring wave
Solugen is a bioproducer that has taken full advantage of the push to restore US manufacturing. In 2024, the US Department of Energy granted a $213.6 million loan to the firm. It was a big win for the company, marking the largest government biomanufacturing loan since Joe Biden brought in an executive order to expand the US bioeconomy in 2022. The next biggest biomanufacturing loan recipient after Solugen had been one for $25 million, for Liberation Labs.
Solugen’s 2050 vision is ambitious, envisaging a Bioforge in ‘every city’. In one animated mock-up online, a roving X-ray vision spotlight moves through a futuristic cityscape, revealing an underground network of tubes and tunnels. These, Solugen explains, are transporting vital industrial chemicals made through its manufacturing methods throughout the entire city as and when they are needed.
Solugen believes this is possible because of the power of enzymes to convert cheap, abundant, and renewable inputs into just about every valuable product we like. Yet before anything like these futuristic visions could become reality, Solugen will have to convince the new US administration that green chemicals can become a centrepiece in the US industrial revival that Trump says he wants to achieve.
The political landscape has shifted dramatically since Solugen received its loan from the DOE in 2024, when Biden’s Democrats were in power. However, the company remains hopeful. The company believes its goals are bipartisan and that there are no reasons that it cannot continue to expand – a generator of US jobs and manufacturing capacity that is a priority of the new administration as much as the old one.
