ECOFA A viable solution

7th August

7th August

Disturbing news start arriving from other countries; from

the event in Soto and the mediatic publicity, has the

feeling some people want to claim the credit for his work

and appropiate of the idea and, if they can, even the

patent: ‘Gasoline made from bacteria’, is an article of

Technology Review magazine published by the Spanish

newspaper El País on 7th of August of 2007:

‘According an article published in Technology Review

magazine, a biotechnological enterprise created recently

explains the gasoline could be the biological fuel for the

future.

The enterprise LS9, of San Carlos, California, founded by

the geneticist George Chuch, from the Medicine Faculty in

Harvard, and the biologist Chris Somerville from Stanford

University, has made a description how is inducing a kind

of bacteria to get similar fuels to the elaborated from

petroleum.

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The enterprise had announced, previously, that was

working in what they are called ‘renewable petroleum’,

but it has happened in the congress of the Society for

Industrial Microbiology which took place last Monday,

where the company has communicated openly its

achievements: they have modified by engineering several

bacteria, included E. Coli, to produce chains of

hydrocarbons to a great extent.

For this reason, the company is using a set of tools from

the synthetic biology field to modify the genetic

mechanisms used by bacteria, plants and animal to

elaborate fatty acids, one of the main ways of keeping

energy of organisms. The fatty acids are chains of carbon

and hydrogen atoms joined with a group of carboxilic acid

made up by carbon, hydrogen and oxygen. When the acid

is eliminated, the result is a hydrocarbon which can

become in fuel.

In some cases, the investigators of LS9 used standard

techniques of DNA recombinant to insert gens into

microbes, in other cases, they redesigned known gens with

a computer and synthesized them. The resultant bacteria

produce and excrete hydrocarbon molecules with the

length and molecular structure wished by the company.

According to Stephen del Cardayne, biochemist and vice

president of investigation an development of LS9, the

company can produce hundred of molecules of different

hydrocarbons. The process can give rise to crude

petroleum without the pollutant sulphur which contains a

big part of the petroleum extracted from the soil. After

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that, the crude would be carried to a standard refinery to

process it and obtain fuels for cars, airplanes, etc.; or any

other products derived from petroleum.

Next year, LS9 will build a factory in California to prove

and improve the process. The company hopes to be able to

sell improved biodiesel and synthetic biocrudes to the

refineries to be later processed within three-five years,

Howewer, LS9 isn't the only company to do it. Amrys

Biotechnologies, in Emerville, California, is also using

plants and animals gens to provoke some microbes to

produce fuels, and according to Neil Renninger, senior

vice president of development and one of the founders of

this enterprise, Armys has also created some bacteria

which are capable of producing fuels based on renewable

hydrocarbons. The difference is that, as long as the LS9

biocrude must be processed in a refinery later, Amrys is

working in the direct obtaining of fuels. And because of

that, it's developing a pilot factory that they hope to

complete by the end of next year, and they want to start

commercializing their products within three or four years.

Besides, both companies are trying to improve their

bacteria to increase their effectiviness and declare to be

working in the optimization of their respective global

production processes.