On bacteria producing ethanol from sugar

Quote from Cui Qiu, a researcher with the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Qingdao Institute of Bioenergy and Bioprocess Technology on rdmag

I don't think the technology is a problem. Scientists have turned numerous microorganisms into impressive producers of biofuel that are highly efficient from the perspective of energy conversion. The biggest issue today is cost. The price for a ton of ethanol, for instance, is less than 5,000 yuan (HK$6,332). If ethanol is produced from sugar using traditional methods, the sugar alone would cost more than 6,000 yuan. Our new method with Clostridium could reduce the sugar requirement and bring the total cost close to ethanol's market price. But then there is no profit. A biofuel must be able to compete with fossil fuels, such as petrol. But there is hope. Fossil fuel resources are declining and leading to more and more complaints about pollution and the price rises are basically irreversible. The higher the cost of fossil fuel, the more demand there is for various biofuels.





Elsewhere, the text:


“Cost is the big roadblock for algae-based fuel,” Douglas Elliott, the lead scientist on the algae project, said in a written statement. “We believe that the process we’ve created will help make algae biofuels much more economical.”

from Biofuel scientists making headway on cheaper algae-based crude

See previous IPBiz post: http://ipbiz.blogspot.com/2013/12/hydrothermal-liquefaction.html