Biology Could Be Used To Turn Sugar Into Diesel

ABCTech has an interesting article about an Emeryville-based tech startup, Amyris Biotechnologies, that is planning to use microbes to turn sugar into diesel. Ethanol is made by adding sugar to yeast, but Amyris believes that it can reprogram the microbes to make something closer to gasoline. The company was initially given a $43 million grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to attempt to research the applications of Synthetic Biology for making a cost-effective malaria drug. Jack Newman, the Vice-President of Amyris said, "Why are we making ethanol if we're trying to make a fuel? We should be making something that looks a lot more like gasoline. We should be making something that looks a lot more like diesel. And if you wanted to design, you name it, a jet fuel? We can make that too."

Comments

Fast Track Global Warming?

[Adeptus_Luminati]

FTFA: "We should be making something that looks a lot more like gasoline. We should be making something that looks a lot more like diesel" ... And this helps our Global Warming problem how? Adeptus

... from the Marketing Department

[The_Dougster]

Obviously whoever came up with this scheme has no understanding of either biology or chemistry.

Hey! wouldn't it be great if we could make bacteria ferment diesel! Yeah man! Cool!

I like alternative energy schemes, but I just get the "ain't gonna work" feeling from this one. For one thing the products would have to be water soluble to be fermentation products, so you're looking at some kind of carboxylic acid or long chain alcohol probably. These would then have to be dehydrated in an industrial process by boiling them in acid. The net result is you'd be better off just processing the sugar (or actually just raw plant material) to begin with rather than fooling around fermenting it into something else, because in each step you lose carbon.