Capra Biosciences and Virginia Tech announce strategic collaboration to advance biomanufacturing of lubricants from food waste
Capra Biosciences, Inc. and Virginia Tech are launching a joint project to advance biomanufacturing of lubricants derived from food waste streams. This innovative technology has the potential to establish a more secure and locally available domestic supply chain of Department of Defense-relevant lubricants.
Lubricants are essential to the operation of nearly every piece of equipment used by the American warfighter. Yet, their production is increasingly exposed to global supply chain vulnerabilities. Capra’s approach to biomanufacturing addresses this challenge by leveraging a solvent-tolerant organism with flexible metabolism, paired with proprietary extraction technologies in a continuous flow bioreactor. This modular system enables distributed manufacturing using locally sourced, waste-based feedstocks—dramatically reducing capital costs compared to conventional chemical manufacturing.
By developing bioreactors capable of distributed chemical production from local carbon feedstocks, Capra aims to strengthen supply chain resilience and enable point-of-need manufacturing worldwide. This strategy is designed to bypass global transit bottlenecks and enhance U.S. autonomy and defense readiness. Achieving this vision, however, requires new techniques for valorizing waste streams and integrating them directly into biomanufacturing processes.
Through this collaboration, Capra and Virginia Tech will advance the valorization of food waste via arrested anaerobic digestion (AAD). Together, they will design and construct a novel AAD system to generate biomanufacturing feedstocks for direct use. Capra will then optimize its bioreactor platform for the economical production of commercial lubricants from these feedstocks—addressing key barriers to widespread adoption of biomanufacturing.
The project’s goal is to demonstrate an automated bioreactor system capable of continuous operation using food waste as a feedstock, paving the way for scalable, sustainable, and secure lubricant production.
