Biotech Firm Engineers Organisms that Produce Ethanol

Posted by admin on July 30, 2009 at 11:23 am

Joule Biotechnolgies' process for using genetically-engineered microorganisms to produce ethanol and other fuels. (image: Joule Biotechnologies via wsj.com)

There’s been a rapid “evolution” happening in biofuel. The first biofuels, such as ethanol, were made from crops like corn. This means taking food (and the land used to grow it) away from people and livestock and devoting it to vehicles and industry. Ethanol production has been blamed by many for increasing food prices.  The next step has been to use non-crop—and preferably otherwise low-value or valueless—plant matter, such as  switchgrass, straw, or wood chips, to make biofuel. This is better, since it doesn’t divert food, but still often involves using substantial acreage of arable land, or transporting huge volumes of plant waste, which has inherent inefficiencies.

The next step after that is to use organisms such as algae, which can be grown in almost “industrial” or factory-like conditions with minimal use of valuable land or other resources.

However, even algae biofuel still has the problem that you have to process the plants into fuel—it’s not that they make fuel for you, but that you grow them and turn them into fuel.

What if you could take it one step further—use organisms that actually secrete, or give off, fuel, reducing the amount of processing that has to be done? Organisms that, like algae, can be grown using minimal resources and land, in a controllable and scalable industrial fashion? That would increase the efficiency of the process while reducing negative consequences.

Now you can—or at least that’s what Joule Biotechnologies promises, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday.  Joule, a bioenergy start-up based in Cambridge, MA, claims to have developed and at least laboratory tested a process that uses a synthetic microorganism to capture sunlight via photosynthesis and release biofuel. The organism is teamed with a “solar collector” to concentrate sunlight for higher energy outputs, as well as a process for sieving out the fuel they produce from the organisms and the water in which they grown.

A “synthetic microorganism” means a very tiny life form—such as bacteria (Joule’s not saying exactly what it is)—that was in some fashion genetically engineered or modified. In this case, it’s been modified so that its photosynthesis produces fuel, such as ethanol, rather than sugars; it’s also apparently been modified (though Joule’s understandably being cagey with the details) so that it secretes the fuel, rather than requiring the organisms themselves to be rendered down and processed.

Joule claims high efficiencies for its process, stating they believe it will yield 20,000 gallons of ethanol per acre per year, at a subsidized cost of around $50 a barrel. (Without government subsidies, it’s unclear whether Joule’s process, or any other biofuel process, would be presently price competitive with fossil fuel.) Joule’s goal is to produce “solar ethanol” from a pilot plant next year, then seek investment and partners to scale up.

Other advantages of Joule’s process are that not only does it not require valuable land, but the organisms can exist in otherwise unusable brackish or gray water.  Plus, since the organisms are engineered, they can be “tweaked” to produce any of a number of different substances or fuels—10 different types so far, Joule says.

The U.S. Renewable Fuel Standard calls for up 36 billion gallons of renewable fuel to be made part of the nation’s gasoline supply by 2022, 21 billion gallons of which have to come from non-food sources. (Since the U.S. uses around 137 billion gallons of gasoline per year, that means that a bit under one-sixth the gasoline supply will need to come from non-food biofuel.) Joule’s process can help reach that benchmark and, like any biofuel process that adds new organisms (rather than processing ones growing anyway), it can help sequester or take CO2 out of the atmosphere—the biofuel organisms capture the CO2 and convert it into fuel.

Using synthetic microorganisms to make fuel is a clever way to reduce dependence on fossil fuels. It’s probably more an evolutionary, rather than a revolutionary improvement, given the way biofuels had been developing—but that doesn’t make it less clever or potentially beneficial.