UCLA has licensed a new process that uses E. Coli bacteria to enhance the efficiency of biofuel production to Gevo, a Pasadena, CA-based biofuel start-up. The innovation could ultimately provide relief to a struggling biofuels industry that is facing rising material costs, spiraling stock prices, and a shrinking pool of venture capital dollars. With the limited availability of crops such as corn and sugar cane, which are easily converted into ethanol, a number of researchers and entrepreneurs have turned to the possibility of producing the fuel from waste cellulose and other materials. But so far, cellulosic ethanol has proven less efficient and more costly — a difficult sell given market conditions. The UCLA researchers who developed the technology licensed by Gevo hope they can change those dynamics. While ethanol isn’t as efficient as traditional fossil-fuel gasoline, the UCLA team says it can use the modified E. coli bacteria to efficiently produce “higher-chain alcohols,” which have an energy density closer to gasoline than to ethanol. More specifically, they claim to be the first group to achieve production of a higher-chain alcohol from a renewable source with high yields, namely glucose, from which they produced isobutanol. If the research team succeeds in making large quantities of higher-chain alcohol, they would also solve a major storage problem since ethanol — unlike higher-chain alcohols — faces the challenge of corrosion due to water absorption, making it difficult to store and distribute using existing infrastructure. Go to: GreenTech Media

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