[Digestion] cellulosic ethanol process

[Robert Taylor]

This from New Scientist magazine 
(technology.newscientist.com/channel/tech/dn13026)
Biofuel bug
An alternative energy company called SunEthanol [www.sunethanol.com] based 
in Massachusetts, US, hit the headlines earlier this year when it claimed to 
have found a naturally occurring organism called "Microbe Q" that could 
convert waste biomass such as corn stalks, sawdust and grass cuttings into 
ethanol.

This is important because bioethanol could replace petrol as a fuel for 
internal combustion engines. Ethanol can already be made from biomass, but 
requires a multistage process employing enzymes to break down the cellulose 
before the biomass sugars can be fermented.

Now the company has filed a patent application for an industrial process 
that employs a microbe called Clostridium phytofermentans. The organism was 
discovered by company co-founder Susan Leschine 
[bwww.bio.umass.edu/mcb/faculty/Leschine.html] and colleague Tom Warnick 
from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, US, in soil near the 
Quabbin Reservoir in Massachusetts.

They say this naturally occurring anaerobic microbe can produce ethanol in a 
composting tank, in which biomass is fermented in the presence of the 
microbe. The process works without the need for enzymes of any kind, making 
it potentially cheaper than other approaches.

The company has already attracted funding from several investors.

Read the full Q microbe patent application.

[(WO/2007/089677) SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR PRODUCING BIOFUELS AND RELATED 
MATERIALS]

[http://www.wipo.int/pctdb/en/] (WIPO search page)

[http://tinyurl.com/358jdt] (the patent application)