- Where there's muck, there's gas. Scientists have created
genetically modified yeasts and fungi that can turn agricultural waste
into fuel for cars and trucks. In future we may take to the roads in
vehicles
powered by left over plant remains.
-
- The technology - created with European Union money -
uses corn stubble and other farm waste as basic ingredients for making
ethanol. This can then be used as a substitute for petrol.
-
- This project has been hailed by researchers and
politicians
because it could help Europe make major cuts in its massive oil import
bill. Apart from North Sea oil, which is now drying up, nearly all the
Continent's oil and petrol is imported.
-
- 'Transport is a potential horror story for Europe,'
Wiktor
Raldow, head of renewable energy for the European Commission, told a
bio-energy
conference in Sweden last week. 'We are 98 per cent reliant on oil, 70
per cent of it imported. We have to find alternatives - and
quickly.'
-
- The project uses biomass, organic matter from plants.
Sources include wood, crops, and agriculture and forestry waste.
Traditionally,
they have been burnt as a fuel or just to get rid of them, though corn
stubble is now ploughed into the ground in the UK because of the impact
of burning on the environment.
-
- 'We can no longer afford to waste our biomass,' said
project scientist Professor Lissa Viikari, of the VTT Technical Research
Centre of Finland. 'Brazil makes 150,000 million litres of fuel by
fermenting
sugar cane [so] reducing the country's dependence on oil. Europe has to
match that.'
-
- But European crops are far harder to turn into ethanol
than sugar cane. Corn stubble and wood from willow and spruce trees are
rich in chemicals such as cellulose, and these are hard to break down
during
fermentation. To get round this, the team, based in Scandinavia, Hungary
and Italy, has turned to the techniques of gene splicing.
-
- First, they have added genes to species of common wild
fungi. 'Fungi make enzymes, chemicals that act like tiny scissors that
can cut up complex strands of organic material,' said project leader Katy
Reczey, of Budapest University. 'These enzymes are quite good at breaking
down cellulose, but not good enough. We have improved on nature by splicing
extra genes into fungi so they make even better enzymes.'
-
- These 'souped-up' enzymes are used to treat the corn
stubble and wood, breaking down the cellulose into fragments that can be
more easily digested by yeast during fermentation. The team has also
genetically
altered the yeasts used to ferment their cellulose fragments into ethanol,
again boosting production.
-
- More than 75 million tonnes of stubble are left each
year from Europe's harvests. Fermenting it all would create 250,000 million
litres of ethanol, equal to the world's entire current production.
-
- In addition, such fuel does not increase global warming.
The carbon dioxide released by burning ethanol is absorbed by the corn,
spruce and willow plants which are grown the following year, so the gas
is effectively recycled.
-
- Ethanol is only a partial substitute for petrol, which
can be diluted by 10 per cent by it.
-
- The mixture will burn happily in a normal car engine.
'It may not seem much but a 20 per cent cut in oil imports would be a
significant
help for Europe,' said Reczey.
-
- Ethanol: the facts
-
- * More than five billion litres of ethanol are used as
fuel in Canada and the US a year, about 1 per cent of the petrol
volume.
-
- * All cars made since 1970 can use up to 10 per cent
of ethanol in their petrol without changes.
-
- * Henry Ford designed his 1908 Model T to run on the
chemical.
-
- * It is a depressant that makes people who swallow it
less able to make responsible decisions.
-
- * Oscar Wilde said ethanol, 'if taken in sufficient
quantities,
produces the effects of intoxication'.
-
- Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited
2004
-
- http://www.guardian.co.uk/waste/
- story/0,12188,1356250,00.html
|
