Sentences with phrase «converting cellulose»

Researchers there are engineering a microbe that combines the last two stages of ethanol production: converting cellulose into sugar, and turning sugar into ethanol.

In their study, the team investigated the possibility of converting cellulose into hydrogen using sunlight and a simple catalyst — a substance which speeds up a chemical reaction without getting used up.

These would be new types of bio-ethanol or other sorts of potential fuels that would be made by converting the cellulose, the stocky, woody material that's really makes up the structure of most plants; and we have a lot of that.

For all its prowess in making cheap ethanol, Brazil, which spends relatively little on R&D, has fallen behind in the race to convert cellulose to fuel.

To convert cellulose and hemicellulose to fuels, researchers must first break them down into individual sugars that microbes can eat.

Researchers at Tohoku University in Japan have developed a one - pot process to convert cellulose to n - hexane in the presence of hydrogen gas.

Those promoting biofuels plead using cellulose feedstocks rather than grain or corn based feedstocks, however, the pilot projects to convert cellulose feedstocks to biofuel require multiple technical breakthroughs which may not be possible.

Genencor genetically engineered the fungus to become more effective and to produce new enzymes that are then used to convert cellulose more quickly into sugar, the basic building block for biofuel, Lavielle said.

Trying to convert cellulose to alcohol or coal - to - liquids also may be a real problem.

Not exact matches

We've used yeast to convert plant cellulose and starch into biofuels like ethanol for decades; however, the process still isn't efficient, and scientists are genetically altering yeast to change that.

The problem is that the sugar is accessible only after it is chemically converted from the tough molecules that make up the walls of plant cells: fibrous cellulose, hemicellulose, and lignin.

A research team from the National University of Singapore's (NUS) Faculty of Engineering has achieved a world's first by successfully converting paper waste into green cellulose aerogels that are non-toxic, ultralight, flexible, extremely strong and water repellent.

Wood the - «green gold» of Finland — is a renewable raw material and wood cellulose can be converted to a golden opportunity when we find new high added value applications alongside the traditional paper and pulp industry,» says Project Coordinator Johanna Buchert, Vice President, Research, VTT.

The researchers are also interested in coating the biofilms with enzymes that catalyze the breakdown of cellulose, which could be useful for converting agricultural waste to biofuels.

It chewed up the cloth and used special enzymes to convert the indigestible cellulose into simple sugars.

Atalla finds that briefly soaking corn stover (the leftover parts of the plant, such as husks) in a solution of sodium hydroxide, ethanol, and water changes the molecular structure of the cellulose, allowing him to convert nearly twice as much of it as is possible with existing methods.

Iogen Corporation has furthered this technology by developing enzymes to convert tough, sugar - bearing cellulose in inexpensively produced agricultural waste into ethanol (opposite page, top).

At his institute, agronomists will work on identifying or creating the fuel crop of the future, while bio-prospectors will hunt for enzymes that quickly convert tough, indigestible cellulose into sugar.

The added genes allowed the bugs to live on cellulose, breaking it down and converting it to ethanol, a technology the company is now commercializing.

Optimizing their method, the team found that they could consistently achieve a high yield of HMF — the method converted about 57 percent of the sugar content in the cellulose feedstock to HMF through this single step process.

«In biomass like wood, corn stover and switchgrass, cellulose is the most abundant polymer that researchers are trying to convert to biofuels and plastics,» said chemist Z. Conrad Zhang, who led the work while at PNNL's Institute for Integrated Catalysis.

By combining the cellulose - breakdown and sugar - conversion steps, we are very close to a single - step method of converting raw biomass into a new platform chemical — a chemical you can readily turn into a transportation fuel or for synthesis of plastics and other useful materials,» said PNNL geochemist and study coauthor Jim Amonette.

Because the process does not rely on fermentation, the cellulose does not have to be converted to sugars first.

Ordinarily, it is wasted when plant biomass, including cellulose, is converted into biofuels like ethanol.

Other included enzymes are amylase (convert starch to sugar), cellulase (eats cellulose), lactase (eats milk sugar), lipase (uses water to break down fat), papain (helps amino acid usage), protease (helps digestion of protein).

Here's how it works: Grass plants convert solar energy (and atmospheric carbon dioxide) into plant biomass, and the cow synthesizes that plant material into her own energy via the cellulose - digesting microbes in her rumen.

With regards to cattle, methanogenesis is what powers their gut bacteria that converts otherwise indigestible cellulose into usable energy for the cow.

Uses a unique type of microbe to convert biomass into ethanol in one step, potentially replacing a multistep process that uses expensive enzymes to break down cellulose.

These «biorefineries» will convert widely available, inexpensive, organic materials such as agricultural residues, high - content biomass crops, wood residues, and cellulose in municipal solid wastes into ethanol.

(Some of the energy is also stored in vegetation through the photosynthesis which uses energy from the sun to convert H2O and CO2 into oxygen and cellulose, but that is a longer time perspective.)

The process used to convert bamboo grass stalks into soft yarn is akin to viscose (rayon) production, which has traditionally been a very dirty industry, using caustic solvents to extract the cellulose element.

But our human waste system with huge amounts of paper and other cellulose products have 5 - 10 times more biocarbon that we let get degraded to reemit GHGs when we could be converting them to inert carbon.

For examples, are forests passive with regard to the energy balance, or do they convert CO2, water, AND energy to cellulose?

In the original process, cellulose is first converted into methyl glycolate (MG) in methanol with the promotion of a...

These «biorefineries» will convert widely available, inexpensive, organic materials such as agricultural residues, high - content biomass crops, wood residues, and cellulose in municipal solid wastes into valuable and renewable end products.