Tag Archives: biotechnology
At the American Chemical Society Conference, Dr Malcolm J Brown Jr, a leading researcher on nanocellulose since the 1970s, has reported major advances in producing nanocellulose from blue-green algae. The great strength and light weight of nanocellulose have fostered interest in using it in everything from lightweight armour and ballistic glass to wound dressings and scaffolds for growing replacement organs for transplantation. Cellulose is the most abundant organic polymer on earth but most of it is in the form of wood fibre and plant cell walls. Very few organisms produce cellulose in its nanostructure form. Nanocellulose research has a long … Continue Reading
Researchers at the University of Georgia say that they have found a way to take the carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and use it to make useful industrial products, potentially including liquid fuels. The process uses a unique microorganism called a "rushing fireball" (Pyrococcus furiosus) which thrives by feeding on carbohydrates in the super-heated ocean waters near geothermal vents. By manipulating this organism's genetic material, the researchers created a microorganism that is capable of living at much lower temperatures and feeds on carbon dioxide. The research team then used hydrogen gas to create a chemical reaction in the microorganism that … Continue Reading
French biochemist Pierre Calleja has developed a lighting system that draws CO2 from the atmosphere and uses micro-algae to produce light with oxygen as a byproduct. The inventor claims that one of his street lights will absorb CO2 at the rate of one tonne a year – which is about as much as a typical tree absorbs in its lifetime.
Dutch scientists from Utrecht University and the Dow Chemical Company have found a way of turning plant matter into the building blocks of common plastics using a catalyst made from iron nanoparticles, that offers an alternative to oil-based production. Existing bioplastics, which are made from crops such as corn and sugar, have only limited use because they are not exact substitutes for oil-based products. However, the Dutch team has produced ethylene and propylene which are the same as those made in petrochemical works, allowing them to be used in a wide range of industries. The downside is that, like oil-based … Continue Reading
In the video below, MIT researcher Andreas Mershin describes advances in producing photovoltaic cells based on waste plant material, such as grass clippings. The work is an extension of a project begun eight years ago by Shuguang Zhang, associate director at MIT’s Center for Biomedical Engineering. Zhang extracted the tiny structures within plant cells that carry out photosynthesis from plants, stabilized them chemically and formed a layer on a glass substrate that could produce an electric current when exposed to light. But assembling and stabilizing the material required expensive chemicals and sophisticated lab equipment and the efficiency of the solar … Continue Reading
Seaweed would seem to an ideal source of biomass for making renewable fuels. Kelp has a high sugar content; it doesn’t need farmland or fresh water and large quantities can be sustainably harvested. Harvesting the kelp which is already growing along 3% of the world’s coastlines could potentially produce 60 billion gallons of ethanol. The problem with kelp is that its primary sugar, alginate, could not be broken down efficiently enough to produce biofuel on an industrial scale. Now, scientists from the Bio Architecture Laboratory in Berkeley, California, have genetically engineered a strain of E. coli bacteria capable of digesting … Continue Reading
A team of students from the UK’s Newcastle University has genetically modified bacteria to repair cracks in concrete. The microbes only start germinating when triggered by the specific pH of concrete. Once the cells have germinated, they swarm down the fine cracks in the concrete until they have reached the bottom where they start clumping. This clumping activates the cells to differentiate into three types: cells which produce calcium carbonate cells which become ffilaments and cells which produce a glue. The calcium carbonate and bacterial glue combine with the filamentous cells, ultimately hardening to the same strength of the surrounding … Continue Reading
Hydrogen can be produced in a way that is carbon neutral by adding bacteria to forestry or household waste in a similar way to that used for biogas production. However, this process does not produce much hydrogen gas for the amount of biomass needed. Now, researchers at Lund University in Sweden have found that a bacterium called Caldicellulosiruptor saccharolyticus, which was isolated in a hot spring in New Zealand, .produces twice as much hydrogen gas as the bacteria currently used. The discovery increase the possibilities of competitive biological production of hydrogen gas. According to Karin Willquist, who is presenting a … Continue Reading
A team of MIT Biological Material Group researchers has developed a way of using a modified virus as a kind of biological scaffold that can assemble the nanoscale components needed to split a water molecule into hydrogen and oxygen atoms. During photosynthesis in plant cells, natural pigments absorb sunlight, while catalysts then promote the use of that energy to split water into its component hydrogen and oxygen molecules. The MIT team, led by Professor Angela Belcher, engineered a common, harmless bacterial virus called M13 so that it would attract and bind with molecules of a biological pigment (in this case … Continue Reading
Scientists at Arizona State University have reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science that they have genetically engineered bacteria to produce biofuel. Researchers Xinyao Liu and Roy Curtiss have engineered cyanobacteria (blue-green algae) that continuously secret the oil. The scientists started by producing cyanobacteria carrying the enzyme thioesterase, that clips the bonds that bind fatty acid to more complex carrier proteins. This allowed for oil to accumulate within the microbes, to the point where it can no longer be contained. They then modified two layers of the cyanobacteria’s cellular envelope so that the fatty acid could get … Continue Reading
Videos
Renewables News- Dysol Aiming to Print Storage with Solar CellsAustralia's Dyesol Limited has acquired an equity stake in Printed Power Pte Ltd, a spinoff company of Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. Printed Power is focussing on integrating dye solar cell technology with printed storage and power management systems to … Continue Reading → […]
- CSIRO Printer Makes 10m of Solar Cells a MinuteCSIRO researchers have built a gigantic printer that spits out solar cells at a rate of about ten metres a minute. The printer system uses existing technology to embed polymer solar cells (also known as organic solar cells) in thin … Continue Reading → […]
- New Aussie Technology to Clean Polluted WaterScientists from Deakin University, together with French colleagues, say that they have manufactured a lightweight and reusable material that can absorb up to 33 times its weight in a wide range of spilt oils, chemical solvents and dyes, while repelling … Continue Reading → […]
- Dysol Aiming to Print Storage with Solar Cells
