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Biofuel Discovery can Solve World Energy Crisis
>> YOUR LINK HERE: ___ http://youtube.com/watch?v=oHiKDisnstQ
This episode of science news discusses a newly discovered alternative energy source that can help reduce our oil dependence and provide energy security. • Article: • http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/... • -Background- • As the world's population rises there is an ever-growing need for energy. So far we are mainly dependent on fossil fuel; but in recent years oil prices keep rising so scientists have given more focus toward biofuel solutions. Unfortunately the current process for making biofuels is too expensive; so researchers have been studying organisms that break down wood in hopes to find a cheaper industrial solution. Luckily these scientists have hit the jackpot and after publishing their research they have high hopes of implementing their work in industrial applications. • -Current Methods- • Currently biofuel is mainly created by fermenting sugar or starch based crops like cane, sugar beet, corn, or maize to produce ethanol. Another method of creating biofuel is blending petroleum with natural oils secreted from things like oil palm, soybean, or algae to create biodiesel. But today our focus will be on the particular liquid biofuel that is created by breaking down woody biomass like wood and straw. • This method is known as the Fischer-Tropsch process which is a series of chemical reactions that convert the carbon monoxide and hydrogen in biomass into liquid hydrocarbons or simple sugars. These sugars are then fermented to produce liquid biofuel. This current method is way too expensive to be a practical solution, and a real competitor to fossil fuels in the energy market; which is exactly why researchers have been studying organisms that break down wood. • --New Method— • This new method relies on a key enzyme produced by gribbles. Gribbles are organisms that are around 0.1in in length and live in watery shorelines and bore into piers, and nearby plants. In order to eat they use enzymes to break down wood for digestion, and use an enzyme known as cellulase that attaches to a long chain of complex sugars and breaks them into small soluble molecules that are easier to digest or ferment. • After discovering this enzyme researchers at NYU, U Portsmouth, and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory have used advanced biochemical analysis and X-ray imaging to determine the structure of this key enzyme. Reasearchers have used X-rays to gather images of the crystals of these enzymes; and turned those images into 3D models. Then ran those 3D models through super computers to fully analyze what properties make them so robust and efficient. They found although this structure was similar to other enzymes at first glance, after closer inspection they found that is has an extremely acidic surface. • -Future Developments- • Now that these researchers better understand how this enzyme works they wanted to produce in on an industrial scale instead of collecting it from gribbles. They did this by transferring the generic blueprint they created of this enzyme into an industrial microbe that will make it in large quantities. • Not only are these enzymes a lot cheaper to produce compared to past solutions, due to their robustness they can even be reused providing an even greener solution. For this production these researchers have been given a $36.7mil investment; by the Sustainable Bioenergy Centre. • So hopefully in the near future people following this story will keep releasing data of how this new solution progresses; but either way people are seeing this development could become a real competitor to fossil fuels by 2020.
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