Advances in Bioenergy

Ohio Farmer (blog)
Posted on October 20, 2009 at 5:00 AM

There's a lot more attention being paid these days to plants and algae as a source of renewable hydrocarbons that could replace petroleum-based hydrocarbons. A new $2 million research program at Iowa State University, funded by a National Science Foundation Grant, aims to look much more closely at this issue.

Researchers know that plants capture solar energy and create compounds identical to petroleum, but little is known about the exact structures, mechanisms, genetics or metabolism of that conversion. The four-year grant will study the production of biological hydrocarbons. The work will focus on a way to isolate and bioengineer a catalyst that creates biological hydrocarbons. This work could lead to technologies that change how liquid fuels are produced.

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