D. Jack Alkire
BLOOMINGTON -- Tucked away on Lafayette Park Drive, across the parking lot from Rydn Drty Cycles and sharing real estate with Fornelli's Detailing, Symbio Bioculinary is quietly finding new ways to reuse food waste, with science.
They do this by taking a byproduct of food production -- something that has already been used and commonly thought of as waste -- and find a way to create products that customers can reintroduce in their food production, said Elliott Notrica, CEO and founder of Symbio.
The 22-year-old St. Louis native has traveled the world, trained as a chef and is currently a senior studying biology at Illinois Wesleyan University. But he is already making his mark as a scientist.
"We've done a lot with sugars," he said. "So, we'll make like, what are called rare sugars, so xylose and other types of sugars. We've done a lot with amino acids. So, we'll improve like the umami of something or the other sensory characteristics."
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They use a variety of methods, but the goal is the same, Notrica said: to take something that would otherwise be thrown away and find a new use for it.
The problem/goal
According to the U.S. EPA, 66 million tons of food waste were generated in 2019 in households, food retail and food service, with an additional 40 million tons in food and beverage manufacturing.
In 2022, according to Symbio's website, that manufacturing waste cost over $40 billion. "In 2023, the average cost for solid waste disposal was $56 per ton," according to Symbio.
"Targeting food waste, it's one of the main options we have to fight ... how we pollute this world, since we're putting so much (of our) resources and so much energy and everything to produce food, and then we just waste it," said Nikolai Valencia.
A 2025 graduate of St. Ambrose University in Davenport, Iowa, Valencia finds motivation to be more eco-friendly from his family, he said.
"My sister always taught me and my family to be greener and, kind of, be nicer to the environment," Valencia said. "That kind of pushed me to get into chemistry. ... Thankfully I got to find Symbio, where we're targeting this massive food waste issue."
Symbio partners with organizations across the globe, like Bio'c Co. in Japan and Enzyme Supplies based out Oxford, England.
Their list of clients includes Honeymoon Chocolates and Companion Baking in St. Louis, Wood Hat Spirits in Missouri, Hobson Family Farms in Ventura County, California, and Trinchero Wines in Napa Valley.
"Any time we start a new project, like, a customer will come to us with some type of side product that they have. The first thing we need to do is figure out what it actually is," Notrica said.
They have special equipment that will perform chemical and biological analyses on the product, he said.
"Based on the chemical composition of (what) it is, then we basically have a machine learning pipeline where we'll take all the data that we've generated ... and then that will tell us what the options are," Notrica said.
They take those options back to the customer and, depending on their business needs, decide what new product to create from the original materials, he said. That usually looks like things that can be reintroduced on an industrial scale, like sugars, emulsifiers, amino acids and antioxidants, for example.
The true "product" Symbio makes, though, is the scientific process, the method of extracting the end product from the source product to be reintroduced into food production.
"It really depends on A) on what the side product is, and then B) what the customer has an interest in," Notrica said. "Because our goal, always, is to make an end product that they can use again in their own production."
New antioxidant
On Tuesday, Sept. 16, Notrica invited reporters with The Pantagraph to tour his laboratory and see some of the science in action.
One of his tasks that day was extracting antioxidants from a previously unknown source.
According to the Mayo Clinic, "Antioxidants are certain nutrients, such as vitamins C or E or carotenoids, which may help protect cells against daily damage."
Notrica could not reveal who the client was or even what seeds he was using, but he did say it was a commonly pressed oil seed.
"I don't think that you're going to take my antioxidants, but I'm not technically allowed to say," he said, smiling. "But yeah, it's a new source of antioxidant that we've found."
To get to the antioxidants, he used a process known as rotary extraction.
This is a chemical process that suspends the antioxidants in a solvent (high proof alcohol) and then extracts the ethanol through a vacuum, leaving only the antioxidants.
It starts with taking isopropyl alcohol, 96%, chilled to minus 80 degrees Celsius.
"When we pull a vacuum, the fumes will come down and hit this super cold ethanol, and it'll condense all the ethanol (from the antioxidant solution) in the air," Notrica explained.
Then, he blended the seed husks, which had already been pressed for their oil, with a high-proof alcohol, in this case, Everclear. Since antioxidants are soluble in ethanol, this will isolate them from the rest of the seed husk, Notrica said.
"It will separate the antioxidants out of the cellulose and the lignin ... and all the antioxidants are in solution. But then we just take the ethanol out of it," he said.
The alcohol/antioxidant solution is added to a round glass receptacle that spins in a hot water bath (60 degrees Celsius for this operation) while the vacuum pulls the ethanol out, leaving only the antioxidants.
After a several minutes, all the liquid ethanol had been removed from the glass receptacle, and all that was left was a brilliant purple ring along the glass.
Notrica added purified water to it and moved it to a smaller glass jar, creating a solution of pure antioxidants.
"We've tested it, and the amount of antioxidants is insane," he said.
On a small scale, this process is relatively efficient, since roughly 60% of the ethanol solvent can be recycled, Notrica said.
"What we're trying to do right now is develop an approach that doesn't use solvents, so it will be entirely enzymatic," he said.
Enzymes through fermentation
According to Symbio's website, they use precision fermentation to create the enzymes they use.
"Sometimes we use isolated/purified enzymes, i.e. purified amylase, protease, et cetera," Notrica said in an email. "But generally, we use solid-state fermentation of (Aspergillus oryzae) to produce the specific enzymes needed to convert the (byproduct) into the target product or extract the target product from the (byproduct), such as releasing antioxidants that are bound in plant lignin or cellulose."
On Tuesday, Notrica said they have created a process to reuse these enzymes.
"What we have done, also, is we have enzymes that we've, basically, we've bound them chemically to silica, so to, like, sand, essentially," he said. "So, we can use these enzymes over and over, because we can take them out of the solution after we do the extraction."
That is much more economical than using a solvent-based extraction, especially on a large scale, Notrica said.
Finding new scientific processes like that is part of what makes Symbio special.
The lab is unique among laboratories, said Omar Santoyo, fermentation technology lead with Symbio.
"We do cool stuff," said Santoyo, a graduate of Knox College in Galesburg. "It's different than working in a job that, like, they do the same thing over and over again, because they have a well-defined point A to point B ... like an analytical lab. That would drive me insane."
At Symbio, though, the work is ever changing.
"Here, depending on the client, it's a whole different process. It's something that I've never done before," Santoyo said.
Contact D. Jack Alkire at (309)820-3275.
Twitter: @d_jack_alkire
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