One of the existing biofuel alternatives for a long time is ethanol. It is often made of corn and mixed into gasoline in most gas stations throughout the country. The problem using ethanol to make fuel is that corn is raw material. Researchers at MIT have now found a way to increase biofuel production such as ethanol using nomodi raw materials.
Raw materials such as straw and wood plants are difficult to use for biofuel production because they must first be broken down into fermented sugar. The process produces many toxic by-to-yeast products, which are the most commonly used microbes to produce biofuels. The team in MIT develops a way to avoid that toxicity makes it worthy of using alternative sources that are far more abundant to produce biofuels.
The researchers can also show that tolerance can be designed to be a yeast strain used to produce other chemicals. It opens the door to use “cellulose” wood plants as a source to produce biodiesel or bioplastics. About 40 percent of all corn planted in the US entered ethanol production, but corn was the main food crop.
Growing corn also requires a lot of water and fertilizer to be produced. Because of that fact, plant material known as cellulose biomass is seen as an interesting source and is not competent for fuel and countless chemicals. The type of biomass includes many types of straw, and corn plant parts are usually not used. MIT said that it could amount to more than 1 million tons of material per year which is sufficient to replace between 30 and 50 percent of petroleum used for transportation.
To overcome the generation of compounds called aldehydes that are very reactive and kill yeast cells, MITs built on techniques that were previously developed to increase the tolerance of yeast cells into large amounts of alcohol series. The researchers engineered yeast to convert aldehyde by cellulose by alcohol, which allowed them to utilize the alcohol tolerance strategy that was developed before. When the team firmly displays enzymes and soaring reactors with membrane reinforcement additives, strain more than three times the level of cellulose ethanol production that matches traditional corn ethanol.
