Researchers Convert ‘Beer’ into a Better-than-Ethanol Biofuel
Submitted by admin on July 20, 2012 – 2:37 pmNo Comment
by Anne Ju (Cornell Chronicle) At Cornell, researchers are turning beer into biofuel.
It’s not the beer that’s good to drink — but fermentation broth, which is chemically identical to the imbibing beer, from which the fuel ethanol is produced.
Using a mixed bag of microbes for specific chemical reactions, biological engineers have designed a process for upgrading ethanol into something even better — caproic acid, a carboxylic acid that’s a versatile fuel precursor. If scaled up, their process could integrate seamlessly into already-established ethanol production lines. READ MORE Abstract
