New yeast innovations deliver unparalleled performance for bioenergy industry

RALEIGH, North Carolina, United States, July 27, 2022 — Novozymes introduces Innova^® Apex and Innova^® Turbo to the Innova platform. Innova Apex and Turbo are tailored to work in specific fermentation times, enabling ethanol producers to maximize their fermentation process to achieve their desired production targets and business goals.

The Innova brand of yeasts can reduce chemical costs by lowering demand for expensive urea by up 90% and eliminating the need for other fermentation aids like nutritional supplements. Innova Apex delivers up to 2% more ethanol and exceptional robustness to stressors while Innova Turbo’s novel metabolism and stress management in high throughput plants increases ethanol yield by 1.5-2%. Apex and Turbo join Innova^® Quantum — together these 3 advanced yeasts provide the industry with the highest level of performance and application to production demands and needs.

Built with Innova yeast strain technology, Innova Apex and Innova Turbo tolerate the toughest  fermentation stressors, enabling plants to avoid slowdowns and de-risk production. These new yeast strains are built specifically for today’s industrial fermentation conditions helping ethanol producers make the most of their fermentations, consistently liberating the highest levels of ethanol production.

“Since the launch of our Innova platform in 2018, Innova yeasts have become the most sought-after fermentation solution in the industry,” says Rene Garza, Novozymes Region President, NA and VP, Agriculture & Industrial Biosolutions. “Innova Apex and Innova Turbo are the next generation strain technologies to help our ethanol customers continually improve their operations. Innova Apex and Innova Turbo individually provide the most unique and trusted performance, redefining fermentation opportunities in their operational segments. Each unleashes fermentation performance unlike any yeast in the market."

Innova Apex is specifically designed for corn ethanol fermentations that run between 52 and 65 hours, while Innova Turbo is designed for fermentations times of 52 hours or less. Apex and Turbo join Innova Quantum launched in 2021; Quantum is designed for fermentation 65 hours or longer.

Innova^® Apex: Power through production challenges

Innova Apex allows ethanol production facilities to push their plants to up to 36% dry solids and reduce glycerol by up to 38%. The advanced yeast solution consistently delivers reliability and production KPIs under the most difficult process conditions, including temperature spikes up to 101º F. This advanced yeast solution can power through common bacterial infections by tolerating up to 0.6% lactic acid and 0.4% acetic acid.

Compared to the previous Innova Force yeast solution, Innova Apex improves ethanol yield by 2% for even more profitability and improved DDGS quality. Additional profits can be gained by using Innova yeast solutions to significantly reduce input costs such as urea and eliminating fermentation aids, while also reducing organizational stress and process complexity. Additional yield and fewer failed fermentations have delivered, on average, up to $1.8 million in profits.

As a drop-in solution, Innova Apex is an easy-to-use solution for ethanol production facilities. The advanced yeast solution has been proven through rigorous laboratory and full-scale plant trials.

Innova Turbo: Higher throughput, higher yield

Innova Turbo offers 1-3% throughput yield gains, 1.5%-2% more ethanol yield in fast fermentations, consistently ferments high solids of more than 35% and is robust to high ethanol concentrations of more than 16%. Ethanol production plants using Innova Turbo during fermentation reduced acetaldehyde off-gas.

This advanced yeast solution powers through tough operating conditions and compounding stressors such as high fermentation temperature excursions plus organic acids from bacterial infections with thermotolerance up to 101o F and up to 0.8% lactic acid and 0.4% acetic acid.

Fast kinetics in Innova Turbo helps ensure ethanol production plants hit production targets while reducing glycerol up to 20% without risk to a facility’s fermentation reliability and consistency. Starting and finishing the fermentation process strong, Innova Turbo drop glucose averages 0.05% in 48-hour fermentations for clean, effective, on-time ethanol production, so operations can avoid work-arounds such as needing more time to finish.

Using Innova Turbo to break bottlenecks that hurt productivity and increased ethanol yield can result in additional profitability. Lower glycerol can aid in dried distiller’s grains (DDGS) handling.

The Innova^® Portfolio: Not a one-size-fits-all approach

Innova Apex and  Turbo join Innova^® Quantum, released in October 2021, which is an advanced yeast solution specifically developed for fermentation times of more than 65 hours and delivers 2-3% more ethanol yield with exceptional robustness. Each product in the Novozymes Innova fermentation solution portfolio has ideal fermentation kinetics specific to each plant’s operational needs, achieved with yeast designed to work in those targeted operating conditions, and not a one-size-fits-all approach. Only Innova yeast solutions allow ethanol producers to significantly reduce urea or eliminate inputs, such as yeast fermentation aids, which can cost plants up to $300,000 annually, all while increasing dry solids for improved production efficiency and powering through tough operational conditions to smooth plant consistency.

All Innova advanced yeast solutions have elite breeding for robustness and advanced enzyme expression, each developed with MicroBioGen breeding technology and Novozymes biological engineering and world-leading enzyme expertise. The Innova yeast portfolio provides the ethanol industry’s most trusted fermentation performance and value.

For more information on Novozymes or Innova yeast solutions, visit Novozymes.com.