Toyota reveals breakthrough in cellulosic ethanol production

Torque News
Submitted by Don Bain on Mon, 10/03/2011 - 15:56

Toyota Motor Corporation (TMC) today held an event at its Toyota Biotechnology and Afforestation Laboratory in Aichi revealing a newly developed yeast that increases the production yield of cellulosic ethanol bio-fuel, new technologies for the greening of parking lots and walls, and a new “cool-spot creation methodology” for simulating and analyzing the effects of greening.

TMC, using gene recombination technology, has developed a new strain of yeast promising to play an important role in the fermentation process for producing cellulosic ethanol.

Fermentation of xylose, a sugar produced when plant fibers are broken down in the enzymatic saccharification process, is difficult to achieve with naturally occurring yeasts. TMC’s newly developed yeast not only efficiently ferments xylose but is also resistant to fermentation-inhibiting substances such as acetic acid. Consequently this newly developed strain of yeast achieves one of the highest ethanol fermentation density levels in the world at roughly 47 grams per liter and is expected to improve bio-fuel yields while significantly reducing production costs.

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