New bacterial process could yield 75 billion gallons of ethanol annually
Those of you out there obsessed with using anti-bacterial soaps and lotions every ten minutes might want to think twice about killing off every microbe you find. There are plenty of beneficial microbes out there including all the ones in your gut without which you wouldn't be able to process the food you eat. At the University of Maryland, professors Steve Hutcheson and Ron Weiner found a microbe in the nearby Chesapeake Bay that could go a long way toward making ethanol a truly viable alternative to petroleum. A marsh grass bacteria called S. degradans has an enzyme that is being used in a process developed by the pair of professors that has the potential to produce up to 75 billion gallons of cellulosic ethanol annually. They have managed to synthesize the enzyme under the commercial name Ethazyme. Why is it so potentially powerful? Ethazyme can break down the cellulose in all kinds of biomass into sugars for fermentation.
[Source: PhysOrg]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
rgseidl 11:31AM (3/11/2008)
That's a useful step forward, producing liquid fuel from agricultural waste streams at competitive prices would make a lot more sense than using food and feed as inputs. However, the product of the enzymatic disassembly is a mix of sugars, mostly glucose and xylose. Regular brewers' yeast can only convert glucose, but some genetically engineered variants can process both sugars.
There is, of course, still the problem of transporting the ethanol produced, since its a hygroscopic compound.
http://www.purdue.edu/UNS/html4ever/2004/040628.Ho.ethanol.html
Bacterial systems that convert both glucose and xylose into butanol don't exist yet.
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phil easler 1:11PM (3/11/2008)
Why, that's almost 3 whole months of current gasoline useage hear in the US, not bad. How about some electrics for the other 9 months.
Phil
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rgseidl 2:11PM (3/11/2008)
@Phil -
how about switching to more efficient technology and reducing annual mileage by using a bike for local errands? That way, those 75 billion gallons would represent a lot more than 25% of the total.
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