Researchers Looking to Simplify Biofuel Production
The goal is to re-route carbon that plants use to make lignin, a barrier to cellulosic ethanol production, and turn it into a biofuel that could be blended with gasoline.
Purdue University researchers aim to take the middleman out of the biofuel supply.
They have been awarded a $5.2 million U.S. Department of Energy grant to develop a living plant that can produce substances that could be used directly as a biofuel.
Biochemistry professor and principal investigator Clint Chapple says the goal is to re-route carbon that plants use to make lignin, a barrier to cellulosic ethanol production, and turn it into a biofuel.
“Scientists have been focused on getting the sugars out of cell walls and using microorganisms to ferment those sugars into fuel,” Chapple says in a statement.
“We want to take advantage of a plant’s metabolic pathways to make biofuel directly.”
Chapple’s team will work with the common research plant Arabidopsis before applying any findings to a biofuel plant such as poplar trees or switchgrass.
About 25% of a plant's biomass is lignin, a rigid compound in plant cell walls and one that cannot now be conveniently converted into liquid fuel.
The Purdue researchers aim to re-route the molecule that plants funnel into lignin production – the common amino acid phenylalanine – into an alternative metabolic pathway to create phenylethanol, a combustible biofuel that then could be blended with gasoline.
“We wouldn't be able to literally squeeze fuel from the plants, but it would be close,” Chapple says.
Team member and horticulture professor Natalia Dudareva will focus on increasing phenylalanine production in plants.
John Morgan, an associate professor of chemical engineering, will analyze the results of these efforts and develop mathematical models to determine the most efficient methods for re-routing phenylalanine and for making phenylethanol.
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