In the UK, Times Higher Education reported that researchers from Chulalongkorn University in Thailand are using forage grass to feed microorganisms and convert the resulting fat into jet fuel, aiming to replace petroleum-based energy. The “Development of scaling-up technology for production of microbial lipid for biojet fuel synthesis” research project led by researchers from the Department of Botany, Faculty of Science, Chulalongkorn University has been successful in the separation of Saccharomyces cerevisiae yeast (CU-TPD4 strain), which has a high potential for fat accumulation and production of bio-jet fuel to support the increasing demand for energy in the future. The researchers noted that using oleaginous yeast as a feedstock for biofuel production has several advantages over using plants as an oil source. Yeast has a short life cycle, can be cultivated on a variety of foods, is cheap, and requires little labor. It can be cultivated at any time, and scaling up production is simple, they said. This research has also attracted interest from researchers from such institutions as Hamburg University of Technology (TUHH) in Germany and Toulouse Biotechnology Institute (TBI) in France.
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