Built for mild conditions
Most bioprocesses rely on a few well-studied organisms in sterile, temperature-controlled reactors. Real industrial streams are acidic, saline, hot, cold or laden with metals.
Engineered living systems for materials and resource recovery
Biology. Engineered.
Cooling, separating and recovering materials consume a vast share of the world's energy and water, and still leave value behind as waste. BioScentix engineers biological functions, inspired by life at Earth's extremes, to do that work with less.
LIVING SYSTEMSENGINEERINGRESOURCE RECOVERY
01 / The problem
Industry runs on heat, cold and chemistry. The planet pays for it.
Cooling, separating and recovering materials consume a large share of the world's energy and water, and what they fail to recover becomes waste.
Data centres, electrification and the energy transition are pushing that demand higher, on processes never designed for efficiency or reuse.
Separation10–15%
of the world's energy goes on separating chemicals: distillation, evaporation and drying.
Sholl & Lively, Nature, 2016Cooling~10%
of global electricity runs air conditioners and fans, and that demand could triple by 2050.
IEA, The Future of Cooling, 2018Critical elements22%
of the 62 million tonnes of e-waste generated in 2022 was documented as collected and recycled.
Global E-waste Monitor, 2024Plastics9%
of plastic waste is recycled. Most is burned, landfilled or lost to the environment.
OECD Global Plastics Outlook, 202202 / Beyond conventional biotech
Conventional biotech wasn't built for heavy industry. BioScentix is.
Biotech has transformed medicines, enzymes and food, but it works in mild, sterile reactors fed on clean sugar, and it makes products to sell. Industry's biggest energy and waste losses happen in hot, cold, acidic and dirty streams, inside processes that need a better function, not a new product. These are the three limits we start from.
Fed on clean feedstocks
Conventional fermentation runs on refined sugars. Waste streams, brines and leachates are variable, dilute and full of compounds that inhibit growth.
Aimed at products, not processes
Biotech usually makes a molecule to sell. Few biological systems are designed to do a job inside an existing plant: capture, separate, control or convert.
Conventional industrial biotechBioScentix: beyond biotech
Operating conditionsMild, sterile and tightly controlledHarsh conditions, as industry presents them
InputsRefined sugars and clean mediaWaste streams, brines, leachates and plastics
What biology deliversA product moleculeA process function: capture, control or conversion
How it fitsA new, standalone plantModules within processes that already exist
A generalised comparison. Individual technologies vary.
03 / Our approach
Evolution has already solved these problems. We engineer the answers for industry.
Life thrives in polar ice, boiling springs, salt lakes and acidic, metal-rich waters. Organisms there control freezing, concentrate what they need and bind metals, using functions refined over billions of years.
We identify those functions, engineer them for defined industrial conditions and test them inside the processes that matter, against the technologies industry already uses.
Learn from the extremes
Study how extremophiles cope with cold, heat, salinity, acidity and scarcity, and which of their functions could do industrial work.
Engineer the function
Use synthetic biology and materials science to turn a biological function into a robust, controllable component.
Prove it in the process
Measure performance, energy balance and economics against incumbent technology, with industrial partners and real streams.
04 / Programmes
Four programmes. One BioScentix platform.
Every programme is powered by BioScentix: polyextremophilic microalgae, which tolerate several extremes at once, engineered with a modular genetic toolkit so each function can be built, swapped and tuned for its process. Select a programme to see the problem, today's approaches and our direction.
NICE
NICE by BioScentix / Engineered ice and cold bioprocesses
Controlling ice formation with biological materials.
Ice storage lets cold stores and data centres make their cold at night, on cheaper power, and use it during the day. It only works well if the stored water freezes on cue.
- The problem
- Water resists freezing: it supercools below 0 °C, so ice-storage chillers run colder, use more energy and charge less reliably than they need to.
- Today's approaches
- Operators run chillers colder to force the water to freeze and accept the energy penalty, or add nucleating agents to the storage water.
- Our direction
- A material made from nature that makes water freeze on cue. First for ice storage, then for freezing and water recovery.
PRECIOUS by BioScentix / Programmable recovery of critical elements
Recovering critical elements from complex waste.
Electronics, batteries and mining residues hold copper, cobalt, rare earths and precious metals. Recovering them cleanly and selectively is one of the bottlenecks of the energy transition.
- The problem
- Most e-waste is never formally recycled. The streams that remain are acidic, mixed and dilute.
- Today's approaches
- Smelting is energy-intensive and polluting. Chemical leaching needs large volumes of reagents. Conventional biological sorbents rarely survive strong acid.
- Our direction
- Selective capture systems built on acid-tolerant extremophilic microalgae, designed for the conditions real leachates present.
PATINA by BioScentix / Living interfaces for redox recovery
Biological chemistry for functional surfaces.
Coatings protect, filter and catalyse across industry. Many still depend on petrochemical binders, solvents or metal-intensive processes.
- The problem
- Functional surfaces are often made with energy- and solvent-heavy chemistry that is hard to tune or recycle.
- Today's approaches
- Synthetic polymers and metal-based finishes, applied through conventional chemical processing.
- Our direction
- Coatings and interfaces based on pyomelanin, a natural pigment with redox and metal-binding properties, explored for protective and filtration surfaces.
MOSAIC by BioScentix / Specialty chemicals and materials
Specialty chemicals and new materials, made biologically.
An earlier-stage research direction, not yet a commercial offering.
- The problem
- Many specialty molecules need hazardous reagents to make, and only 9% of plastic waste is recycled, so its carbon and value are lost.
- Today's approaches
- Chemical synthesis with reactive reagents and heavy purification. Mechanical recycling that degrades quality with every cycle.
- Our direction
- Biological routes, including precise biological halogenation, that turn plastic-derived and other feedstocks into specialty chemicals and new polymers.
05 / How we work
Evidence first, from lab to process.
BioScentix is an engineering biology company working where biological systems, materials and industrial processes meet.
Every programme is benchmarked against the technology industry already uses, and every result is reported as demonstrated, in development or proposed. Programmes connect into a wider platform only where the chemistry, the economics and the evidence support it.
- Define the use caseA real customer, process boundary and incumbent to beat.
- Prove the biologyControlled, replicated laboratory data.
- Prove the processMass and energy balance, stability and scale-up.
- Pilot with partnersReal streams, real economics.
06 / Contact
Work with BioScentix.
We are building partnerships across industry, research and investment to take engineered biology into industrial processing.
Large energy, water and materials markets, built step by step on evidence.
Test our technology on your cooling, separation or recovery process.
Extremophile biology, synthetic biology and process engineering.
