Friends,
I haven't been on the list long enough to know whether this has already
been posted. If so, my apologies. Doing some spelunking this evening for
other matters, I ran across this.
As you know, one of the problems with cellulosic ethanol is to liberate
the sugars which are tied up in lignin to insure that more of the energy
in plant and tree materials so they can contribute their share to the
process. Recent research ("Lignin degradation in wood-feeding insects"
Gleib et al) has shown that enzymes produced by fungi found in the gut
of Asian longhorn beetles (beetle juice) allows depolymerization of lignin.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-08/ps-nfh081808.php
Researchers say the speedy process could potentially be harnessed to
produce biofuel.
"Getting rid of the lignin barrier and making the cellulose more
accessible is the most expensive and environmentally unfriendly part
of making ethanol from biomass," said Geib. The team's discovery, he
added, could lead to the potential development of cheaper and more
efficient enzymes for converting wood into ethanol.
http://sci.odu.edu/hatchergroup/announcements/announce5.shtml
"These insects have enzymes in their guts that allow them to digest
not only cellulose, but also degrade the lignin. This is a mechanism
for depolymerization. If we can understand the way the enzymes work
to depolymerize the lignin and release cellulose, then we could make
the enzymes and employ them in the processing of cellulose in fresh
wood." [Hatcher said]
After all, he added, "The bugs are trying to get energy from the
cellulose, and we are too."
As executive director of the Virginia Coastal Energy Research
Consortium (VCERC), Hatcher also is leading an initiative based at
ODU to use algae for the production of biodiesel fuel.
d.
--
David William House
"The Complete Biogas Handbook" |www.completebiogas.com|
"Make no search for water. But find thirst,
And water from the very ground will burst."
(Rumi, a Persian mystic poet, quoted in /Delight of Hearts/, p. 77)
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