Safion Renewables Partners with National Laboratory of the Rockies in DOE Project to Advance Cocura Oil™ Process
Three-year initiative will move Cocura Oil™ from fed-batch to continuous manufacturing at the 1,000-liter scale and validate new performance-enhanced applications
LOUISVILLE, Colo., October 16, 2026 — Safion Renewables Inc. today announced a collaboration with the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE's) National Laboratory of the Rockies (NLR) through a project funded by DOE's Alternative Fuels and Feedstocks Office (AFFO).
The planned 36-month project, “Continuous Production of Cocura Oil™”, will receive $2.5 million in fiscal-year 2027 funding and will be conducted at NLR’s Integrated Biorefinery Research Facility through a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) between NLR and Safion. NLR will lead the federally funded pilot-plant work, while Safion will provide its proprietary production strain, process expertise, application-development capabilities and required industrial cost share.
The project will advance Safion’s Cocura Oil™ platform from demonstrated batch and fed-batch production into an integrated continuous-manufacturing process. Development will begin at the 100-liter scale before progressing to continuous production at a 1,000-liter working volume in NLR’s pilot facility.
The project’s principal demonstration target is at least 400 hours of continuous operation to produce more than 100 kilograms of Cocura Oil™.
“Our large-scale campaigns demonstrated that Cocura Oil can be produced and recovered at manufacturing-relevant scale,” said Eric M. Karp, Ph.D., founder and chief executive officer of Safion Renewables. “This DOE-supported partnership with NLR addresses the next economic frontier: continuous production. By keeping the fermentation system productive, continuously separating the oil, and recycling cells, broth and usable carbon, we intend to increase asset utilization, reduce unit cost and establish a commercially relevant manufacturing platform for a new family of American-made performance chemicals.”
Targeting a Cocura Oil™ Cost Below $900 per Metric Ton
A principal objective of the project is to reduce the cost of producing Cocura Oil™ from approximately $1,117 per metric ton to less than $900 per metric ton. The project team expects continuous operation, cell recycling, and product removal to contribute to that cost reduction.
Achieving the project’s cost target would position Cocura Oil™ below the approximately $1,200-per-metric-ton benchmark for conventional lipid and oilseed feedstocks. It would also support Cocura Oil’s transition from a performance-advantaged specialty material to a cost-competitive platform for larger volume commodity chemical markets.
One Fermentation Platform, Multiple Performance-Chemical Pathways
In addition to demonstrating continuous oil production, NLR and Safion will evaluate Cocura Oil™ and its derivatives for performance-enhanced applications in:
- Ionic and nonionic surfactants and emulsifiers;
- Antimicrobial materials and coatings;
- High-performance lubricant precursors;
- Polyurethane and plasticizer building blocks;
- Polyester and other performance polymers; and
- Resins and monomers for additive manufacturing.
Dr. Violeta Sànchez i Nogué, a senior staff researcher with more than 20 years of bioprocess-development experience, is NLR’s principal investigator for the project. The broader NLR team will provide pilot-scale fermentation, oil recovery, analytical chemistry and polymer-development capabilities and expertise. Safion scientists and engineers will support strain technology transfer, continuous-process development, separations, process modeling and product and application testing.
“By combining Safion’s proprietary strain and process knowledge with NLR’s expertise in pilot-scale fermentation, downstream separation, and analytics, this project is uniquely positioned to pioneer new performance-advantaged applications,” said Sànchez i Nogué. “Transitioning from batch production to an integrated continuous process at the 1,000-liter scale will generate the operating data needed to evaluate both manufacturing economics and the performance of Cocura-derived materials.”
Supporting Domestic Chemical Manufacturing
The project was selected under DOE AFFO’s Performance Enhanced Chemicals priority, which supports the scale-up of chemicals that preserve or exploit the distinctive properties of biomass-derived molecules.
By establishing a continuous route to a domestically manufactured product, the project is intended to reduce reliance on imported petrochemical and vegetable-oil feedstocks while expanding the domestic supply of specialty and performance materials.
“What makes this project especially important is that it connects manufacturing economics directly to product performance,” Karp said. “We are not simply seeking to reproduce an incumbent petroleum molecule with renewable carbon. Cocura Oil provides a distinct molecular platform useful for surfactants, lubricants, and chemical functionality for polymers and advanced materials. Continuous manufacturing is the step that can make those advantages available at commercially meaningful cost and volume.”
About Safion Renewables
Safion Renewables Inc. is a biotechnology company developing scalable platforms for renewable oils, fuels, solvents and performance chemicals. Its Cocura Oil™ platform uses extracellular fermentation to produce an oil that can be recovered through gravity-based separation and converted into renewable surfactants, lubricants, antimicrobial materials, polymers, plasticizers and other advanced products. Safion was founded by former national-laboratory scientists and is headquartered in Louisville, Colorado.
Contact
Eric M. Karp, Ph.D.Founder and Chief Executive Officer
Safion Renewables Inc.
ekarp@safionrenewables.com
+1 270-313-6063