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Synopsis of the news report:
"New biobutanol production technology increases yield while lowering cost"
The U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) has awarded $1.6 million to a team from The Grainger College of Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), led by bioengineering professor Ting Lu, along with collaborators from Ohio State University and Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. This grant will support their development of advanced biofuel production techniques using engineered microbial consortia to transform renewable biomass into biobutanol with higher yields and zero carbon dioxide emissions.
Focusing on the sustainable production of biobutanol—a biofuel derived from the fermentation of corn, sugar beets, and other biomass—the project aims to overcome the inefficiencies of traditional ABE (acetone-butanol-ethanol) fermentation. This method currently loses over a third of carbon to CO2 emissions, reducing yield and increasing environmental impact. The team's innovative approach involves combining three bacterial species with electrochemically-reduced formate to optimize carbon conversion, potentially increasing product yields by 50% over traditional methods and offering a competitive alternative to gasoline and bioethanol.
This initiative is part of the ARPA-E’s Energy and Carbon Optimized Synthesis for the Bioeconomy (ECOSynBio) program, which focuses on reducing carbon waste in biofuel manufacturing to align with the Department of Energy’s goals of advancing clean energy technologies and achieving net-zero carbon emissions.
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