Scientists Researching How Plants Can Make Petroleum

As part of a National Science Foundation grant program to examine cutting edge ways to make nature work for us, a team of scientists at Iowa State University have been awarded $2 million to unravel how some plants and algae can make hydrocarbons and discover if the genes that govern that process might be isolated.

“These plants are capturing solar energy and creating something that’s chemically identical to petroleum,” said Jackie Shanks, Iowa State’s Manley R. Hoppe Professor of Chemical Engineering, in a statement.

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The fact that some plants can make hydrocarbons that are almost identical to petroleum has been known for a long time, but, according to Shanks, the exact mechanisms behind that transformation are still largely a mystery. With the NSF funding, the scientists hope to isolate, characterize and bioengineer a catalyst that creates the plant-based hydrocarbons—which could lead to a revolution in how fuel is produced.

Other companies and researchers have also been working on producing petroleum from plants and microbes. For the last few years startup company LS9 has been designing proprietary microbes that can ferment a product indistinguishable from petroleum. In addition, last year a tropical fungus was discovered that produces diesel-type hydrocarbons naturally and other research has shown that it may be possible to cross the genes from a tree with those of a grass to make a diesel-producing grass.

We’ll see where this goes, but the idea of making something that is indistinguishable from petroleum yet is grown using the power of the sun is certainly enticing for many reasons. Whatever process results from these efforts, it would still have to satisfy the food versus fuel critics before it could gain wide acceptance.

Source: EurekAlert

Image Credit: Iowa State University

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