Plan B for Biofuel - Science Snippet
Biofuels have developed a bad name recently. As the food crisis seems to worsen, the wisdom of taking up great swathes of land to grow edible plants like corn - and then just turning them into fuel - is now seriously questioned.
Luckily, we ever-creative humans have come up with an alternative. Second-generation biofuels are being made from inedible plant material - both the ‘waste’ materials from food crops and crops gown on land not suitable for food.
A stumbling-block in the way of this new technology is the fact that it costs up to 50% more to make these fuels, as the need to extract the cellulose from the plant makes the process more complicated. The best way to do this, from current research, is to harness the power of nature - by taking micro-organisms and genetically modifying them to do the job for us. Some researchers suggest trialling the use of the gut bacteria from termites, which has been helping to break down wood for millennia! (NewScientist, Vol198 No2661).
So, things are looking up for the biofuels industry. Lets hope those brilliant researchers receive the funding and support they need to make it a viable reality in this time of rapidly-depleting oil stocks.
To read more about cellulosic ethanol, check out the Wikipedia article here.
July 12 2008 10:50 pm | science snippets
July 13th, 2008 at 9:36 am
I like the recycled vegie oil in cars.
There’s a company in Victoria that helps you convert your car engine to run it on vegie oil and they have a list of fish ‘n’ chip shops where you can “fill ‘er up”.