JBEI Researchers Produce High Density Jet Fuel Precursors from Bacteria
(Green Car Congress) Researchers with the US Department of Energy (DOE) Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI), with colleagues in China, have produced the tricyclic sesquiterpenes epi-isozizaene, pentalenene and α-isocomene—promising jet fuel feedstocks—at high production titers, providing novel, sustainable alternatives to petroleum-based jet fuels. An open-access paper on their work appears in Biotechnology for Biofuels.
Sesquiterpene compounds (C15) such as farnesene and bisabolene have already been identified as promising jet fuel candidates.
The JBEI team explored three sesquiterpenes—epi-isozizaene, pentalenene and α-isocomene—as novel jet fuel precursors. The researchers performed a computational analysis to calculate the energy of combustion of these sesquiterpenes and found that their specific energies are comparable to commercial jet fuel A-1.
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They also introduced a dynamic autoinduction system using previously identified FPP-responsive promoters for inducer-free production and managed to achieve comparable amounts of each compound. READ MORE