by Tina Casey |
A team of scientists at MIT has tweaked a common bacteria into producing biofuel the way a cow produces milk: without having to be squished. The new bacteria simply expels biofuel into its growing medium instead of retaining it within its body. If the process can be scaled up to a commercial level, it could be far more economical than conventional systems, in which the microorganism must be destroyed in order to recover the fuel.
Milking microscopic cows for biofuel
The MIT team used the soil-dwelling bacteria Ralstonia eutropha as its subject. According to MIT writer David Chandler, when the bug is starved for certain nutrients it will stop growing, but it will continue to produce and store complex carbon compounds.
In its natural state, R. eutropha stores the compounds as a type of bioplastic.
The team has engineered a new strain that will release the compounds in the form of isobutanol, which is beginning to find use as a drop-in replacement for gasoline.
More green jobs for microbes
The Department of Energy’s ARPA-E cutting-edge-technology funding arm is behind the MIT research, and the agency sees a lot of promise in bio-based isobutanol. In addition to funding outside projects, DOE’s BioEnergy Science Center is developing a way to convert woody plants into isobutanol with the help of a cellulose-destroying microbe called Clostridium celluloyticum.
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