Tuesday, May 23, 2017,
6:00pm to 8:30pm
PDTIn-Person / Local
1651 Coyote Point Drive
San Mateo, CA 94401
United StatesSynopsis of the Presentation:
Mango Materials is a Bay Area-based start-up that uses methane gas to produce biodegradable biopolymers that are economically and functionally competitive with conventional, oil-based plastics. Mango Materials produces powder or pellets of poly-hydroxyalkanoate (PHA), a valuable product that can be converted into a variety of high-margin or high-volume, environmentally friendly goods such as children's toys, electronics casings, microbeads, water bottles, and packaging containers. Mango Materials was founded based on the founders' graduate research at Stanford University.
Methane is a potent greenhouse gas often produced as a byproduct at sites such as wastewater treatment plants, landfills, and agricultural facilities. Mango Materials' process incentivizes facilities to capture their methane; converting methane into biopolymer is significantly more economically favorable than converting it to electricity. The methane is converted into environmentally friendly, biodegradable biopolymers that can substitute for conventional plastics in a variety of applications.
Mango Materials is currently scaling up its process and operates a pilot facility at a local wastewater treatment plant (Redwood City, CA). This talk will discuss the journey from bench- to pilot-scale and the next steps as the company looks forward to commercialization.
Speaker Bio:
Allison Pieja is the co-founder and CTO of Mango Materials, a start-up company that produces biodegradable polymers from methane gas. She received her Ph.D. in Civil & Environmental Engineering from Stanford University in 2011, with a focus on selection of microbes for the production of poly-hydroxyalkanoate (PHA) from methane. Allison received a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship to pursue her doctoral research, and at Stanford she pioneered the production of PHA from waste methane gas. Allison received her B.S.E. from Princeton University in Civil & Environmental Engineering in 2004 and graduated with a Certificate in Engineering Biology. She has contributed to multiple patents and has several publications in the PHA field. At Mango Materials, she leads scale-up of Mango Materials' process to produce biopolymer from waste methane gas and also manages lab-scale process optimization.
Program consists of:
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Pizza & Networking (6:00-7:00 pm)
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Presentation & Q/A (7:00-8:00 pm)
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Networking (8:00-8:30 pm)
Location:
CuriOdyssey |1651 Coyote Point Drive |San Mateo, CA 94401
AIChE Members: $ 10.00
Non Members: $ 15.00
Paypal Payment @ nathan.hanna.aichenorcal@gmail.com
Contact: Akash Narani, Vice Chair, AIChE NorCal
Email: anarani@lbl.gov
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