Biocatalysis

In a press release yesterday Massachusetts-based Qteros, developer of the Q-microbe “”superbug” (actually Clostridium phytoferrans, but “Q” is much easier to pronounce and type).

The processes uses a material the company calls Recyllose-sewage sludge solids that are high is cellulose. Turning sewage sludge into ethanol offers a big opportunity for Qteros, which is partnering with Israel-based Applied CleanTech to develop the technology. Recyllose is a particularly good type of cellulosic feedstock as it contains very low amounts of lignin, the plant cell wall component that is difficult to degrade. Qteros-ACT scientists claim 120-135 gallons of ethanol per ton of Recyllose, and titers of 9% ethanol currently.

Quoting from the press release: “Our customer is every municipality that has a wastewater treatment plant,” said Jeff Hausthor, Qteros co-founder and senior project manager. “It will provide a value-added product for municipal wastewater plants, thereby making treatment plants much less expensive to run and helping local governments throughout the world with their constrained budgets.”

Israel Biran, ACT’s CEO, added, “It also helps answer the question of what municipalities can do with their sewage sludge, a major challenge now facing every wastewater treatment plant operator.”

There has been a PR blitz over the past 24 hours, and it appears to be well-merited.

South Dakota-based POET Bioenergy is scouting for acquisition among distressed assets. CEO JEff Broin believes that his company’s superior technology allows certain unprofitable ethanol producers to become profitable if only they could adopt POET’s BPX process, producing up to 3 gallons of ethanol per bushel of corn.

The newest pretreatment method to get investor backing is actually a very old method: hydrochloric acid.

A lot of attention has focused on the development of more efficient cellulases and hemi-cellulases to convert cellulosic feedstocks into fermentable sugars. Once this step becomes efficient, biofuels come much closer to a practical reality. Well, a company called HCL Cleantech has just received investments from high profile VCs Burrill & Co. and Khosla Ventures based on a different, enzyme-free approach. HCL Cleantech claims a low-cost biomass to sugars conversion using good, old concentrated hydrochloric acid, offering a process that uses little water and is self-sufficient energetically. As a path to fermentable sugars, the methods would help biofuels development broadly, whether the product is ethanol, butanol, or hydrocarbons. R & D is ongoing in Israel currently, with a pilot plant slated for the USA in 2010. Read the full story here.

T. Boone Pickens on ethanol as a fuel: “It’s an ugly baby, but it’s our ugly baby.”

To read our previous take on ethanol as a fuel, click here.

According to Jack Huttner, VP, Public Affairs, DuPont Danisco, “From our point of view the [cellulosic ethanol] technology is ready for commercialization. It is no longer five years from the market.” 

Now if they could just apply this technology to produce butanol or another better biofuel …

Mascoma announced a bioprocessing breakthrough of sorts. The breakthrough relates to what the company is calling consolidated bioprocessing (CBP) – a transformational technology which the DOE/USDA 2006 Roadmap called “the ultimate low-cost configuration for cellulose hydrolysis and fermentation.” CBP  eliminates the need for adding enzymes to process pretreated lignocellulose into ethanol by integrating their production into the processing step. Estimates provided by Mascoma suggest a 60-% reduction in cost using CBP. You can bet that enzyme developers and producers such as Codexis, Danisco, and Novozymes are not cheering this breakthrough.