Aug

TMO Renewables claims to have found the ethanol “silver bullet”

Posted by admin Published in Vegetable Oil, Biodiesel, Emerging Technologies, Ethanol

“We believe what we’ve found is not far from the silver bullet, and our demonstration plant will be about showing that. We have the organism folks have dreamt of — it eats nearly anything and it makes ethanol really quickly.” - Hamish Curran TMO Renewables CEO

The organism that Curran is speaking of is a bacteria which was located in a compost heap. From there, scientists modified and refined the bacteria and are now saying that it is three-hundred times increasingly efficient that it was while wild. They are calling that bacteria TM242, and it is a thermophile, meaning that it

thrives in high heat environments. They plan to focus first in the U.S. in part considering we have many E85 vehicles already on the road and an existing and growing infrastructure with which to distribute the fuel.

Other news from TMO: “We have an interesting beasty that was found on the side of a volcano in Montserrat just before it exploded. That one eats vegetable oil, drinks methanol and ****’s [ahem… excretes] biodiesel.”

[Source: Treehugger]

Original post by Jeremy Korzeniewski