Biofuel from Fungus ?
During world war II military leaders in South Pacific saw massive deterioration of clothing and tents.Investigation revealed that a fungus T Ressei was behind the damage.This fungus was later identified as a source of industrial enzymes and for conversion of plant fibers into sugars.Now it seems that this spidery organism may also hold the key to improvement in biofuel production.Researchers from Los Alamos National Laboratory and the Department of Energy’s Joint Genome Institute recently uncovered clues about the mechanism of breakdown of plant fibers into sugars by T Ressei.Researchers believe that a deeper understanding of breakdown mechanism of the fungus may pave for development of cost effective processes of conversion of municipal wastes into ethanol.This ethanol from waste products would have a smaller carbon footprint than gasoline. On an industrial scale T Reesei may be employed to secrete enzymes that may be further purified .These purified enzymes may be further added to a mixture of cellulose pulp and other materials for sugar production,which in turn may be further processed for ethanol production.
Tags: biofuel, ethanol, fungus, lanl, t ressei, wasteIf you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
June 18, 2008
[...] rush of entrepreneurs in the cleantech sector; generating power from wind,sun,and tidal energy.Even garbage,agricultural wastes were used for energy generation.As a result Sweden’s growth rates surged [...]