Published on January 28th, 2010
A group of scientists from both the public and private arenas has announced that they’ve successfully engineered a microbe that contains all the bits required to turn raw plant matter directly into diesel without any refinement or intermediary steps required.
The microbe is a modified strain of E. coli (that’s right, the same type of bugger that’s responsible for some nasty gut infections) that has been enhanced to produce tailor-made diesel molecules, alcohols and waxes directly from hemicellulose—one of the main components of plants. Not only can the microbial products be used for fuel, but the team is also setting their sights on directly producing environmentally-friendly—and industrially-necessary—surfactants, solvents and lubricants.
Read the rest of this entry »
Published on September 11th, 2008
It was a weird and improbable shotgun wedding of genetic material — one conducted by your drunk uncle Larry in a brothel on the outskirts of Las Vegas. One in which researchers successfully combined enzymes from a bacteria that normally resides in a cow’s gut with the genes of the leaves and stalk of a corn plant — and one in which the offspring from that marriage is a corn plant that can digest itself into the components needed to make ethanol.
Certainly, anything that can digest itself warrants a closer look — and now a company in Kansas has licensed that proprietary corn offspring, dubbed Spartan Corn III (it even sounds like a name your drunk uncle Larry would approve of), for the ultimate consummation of the marriage in a baptism of commercialization.
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags:
Agriculture,
alternative fuels,
biofuel,
biomass,
cellulosic ethanol,
corn stover,
Ethanol,
Genetic Engineering,
genetics,
GMOs,
Mariam Sticklen,
Michigan State University,
research,
Science,
transportation
Published on August 5th, 2008
Imagine a grass crop, grown on marginal, non-food bearing land without pesticides or much fertilizer, that, when harvested, produces an oil that needs almost no processing to be substituted for diesel fuel.
Much attention has been given to producing ethanol from non-food crops like grasses, but the ability to produce something indistinguishable to diesel from grass could be a game-changer. It would require almost no infrastructure change and could fuel all of the existing long-haul trucks on the road without modification.
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags:
Agriculture,
Biodiesel,
Biofuels,
biotechnology,
cellulosic ethanol,
Chhandak Basu,
copaiba,
Diesel,
diesel tree,
energy crops,
Ethanol,
Food vs. fuel,
genes,
Genetic Engineering,
genetic modification,
Grass,
oleoresin,
research,
Science,
switchgrass,
transportation,
University of Northern Colorado
Published on May 26th, 2008
In the June 2008 issue of the journal Nature Reviews Genetics, internationally renowned biofuels researcher Mariam Sticklen proposes that future production of cellulosic biofuels will be made infinitely more efficient and affordable through genetic modification of cellulosic feedstocks such as cereal grains and perennial grasses. Citing the impossibility of fueling the world on starch-based ethanol, such as that from corn, Sticklen argues that cellulosic biofuels are the only viable option for future commercial production.
Read the rest of this entry »
