The 40 Hottest Technologies of 2018 – as voting gets underway, the nominees in depth
Improved Biomass Conversion through Increased Sugar Utilization and Carbon Conversion Efficiency
What does it do, how does it work, who is it aimed at?
Researchers at NREL have discovered two important technologies to enable efficient and cost-effective biomass conversion with the use of one engineered microbe: the co-fermenting of all sugars simultaneously and with high carbon conversion efficiency. NREL engineered Clostridium thermocellum, a natural cellulose degrader that metabolizes six-carbon sugar, to co-utilize five-carbon sugar, which is approximately 30% of biomass in the form of hemicellulose. The engineered microbe is a solution to the normal challenge of six-carbon sugar inhibiting the use of five-carbon sugar in biomass conversion. NREL discovered that C. thermocellum can increase carbon conversion efficiency by metabolizing cellulosic sugar while simultaneously fixing CO2. Researchers observed a near 10% increase in apparent carbon conversion efficiency via CO2 fixation.
Competitively, what gives this technology an edge?
Collectively, improving biomass utilization by using more sugars without losing it to CO2 will lower feedstock cost and improve process economics. The result that Clostridium thermocellum can metabolize both six- and five-carbon sugars unlocks the possibility of co-utilizing cellulose and hemicellulose without cross-inhibition in a single strain. Further genetic mods can be made on this strain to enhance C. thermocellum’s ability to utilize mixtures of five- and six-carbon substrates derived from lignocellulosic biomass. C. thermocellum, utilizing CO2 and cellulose, underscores metabolic plasticity of the microbe and provides a shift in the fundamental insight of carbon metabolism in a cellulose degrading bacterium. This paves the way to engineering this bacterium to improve microbial carbon efficiency and reduce CO2 in the environment. It also raises possibilities on how the bacterium uses organic carbons and CO2 without breaking the rules of thermodynamics in energy conservation.
What stage of development is this technology at right now?
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