Genetically Modified Bacteria Produce 50 Percent More Fuel

Fri, 04 Oct 2013 14:44:32 -0400

By changing the way certain organisms process sugar, UCLA researchers have shown how to produce more biofuel.

Conventional biofuels are either too expensive to compete with fossil fuels or they release so much carbon dioxide that they’re hardly worth making—or both.

The UCLA advance, which increases the amount of biofuel that can be made from sugar by 50 percent, could make it cheaper to produce biofuels from a variety of sources, especially biomass such as wood chips and grass. The U.S. biofuels industry is in desperate need of such advances—even though Congress has mandated that a certain amount of biofuel from biomass be blended with gasoline, high costs and other factors have limited production, leading the EPA to repeatedly waive the requirement.

“Anytime you use fermentation, you lose one-third of the carbon to carbon dioxide. We can retain that carbon, reduce the carbon footprint of ethanol production, and make more money,” says James Liao, professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at UCLA.