MIT Grads Produce Alternative To Palm Oil

C16 Biosciences, a company founded by MIT alumni, has developed a microbial oil to replace palm oil, whose production reaps environmental devastation, Zach Winn reported for SciTechDaily.

Photo Insert: C16 now produces metric tons of the oil and has launched Palmless. a consumer cosmetic brand.

MIT students David Heller, Shara Ticku, and Harry McNamara founded C16 Biosciences to produce a sustainable alternative to palm oil.

Their product, created through fermenting sugars with oil-producing yeast, aims to tackle the deforestation and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions caused by palm oil production, which thrives only along the equator.

C16 now produces metric tons of the oil and has launched Palmless. a consumer cosmetic brand.

C16 has a number of advantages in its quest to upend the $60 billion palm oil industry: It’s far easier to improve the productivity of C16’s precision fermentation process than it is to improve agricultural processes.

C16 also expects its costs to plummet as it continues to grow. The process has gradually been optimized and scaled and today, C16 is producing tons of oil in 50,000-liter tanks.

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