Text 6410, 189 rader
Skriven 2008-03-10 21:16:16 av Alan Hess
Ärende: ethanol alternative
===========================
Using corn to make ethanol is foolish (but the lobby is strong.)  This article
describes one possible way to make ethanol from non-food material.

*****

www.baltimoresun.com/news/nation/bal-te.bacteria10mar10,0,5794893.story
baltimoresun.com
State dreams big on biofuels
Md. company using bay bacteria to make ethanol from waste

By Frank D. Roylance

Sun reporter

March 10, 2008

A species of bacteria discovered 22 years ago as it gobbled marsh grass along
the Chesapeake Bay has become the secret weapon in a Maryland startup's bid to
produce ethanol fuels from waste paper.

Dubbed Saccharophagus degradans, for "sugar eater," the bacterium produces at
least 70 different enzymes to digest the hard cellulose in plant matter and
turn it into simple sugars.

Add a little yeast, and those sugars ferment to make ethanol, a biofuel that
the federal government hopes will reduce the United States' dependence on
petroleum imports and cut greenhouse gas emissions.

The discovery has Maryland officials - among them Gov. Martin O'Malley, who
will tour the startup company this morning - dreaming of a big-time
biotechnology breakthrough for the state.

"This is very exciting ... one of those extraordinary examples of how research
in Maryland may actually be used to change the world," said O'Malley spokesman
Rick Abbruzzese. "It shows great promise for helping our country and our state
secure our energy future by producing ethanol with very little waste product."

The discovery of S. degradans was pure serendipity, and more than a dozen
attempts to retrieve more of it from the bay marshes have failed.

But University of Maryland microbiologist Steven Hutcheson acquired, preserved
and bred the descendants of the original batch. And now he's developed a
process for putting their cellulose-eating enzymes to work producing ethanol on
a commercial scale.

Hutcheson is the founder and CEO of Zymetis Inc., a startup born in 2006 in a
University of Maryland business incubator. Together with Fiberight, a company
in Lawrenceville, Va., that extracts cellulose from nonrecylable municipal
waste, Hutcheson hopes to launch a full-scale waste-to-ethanol demonstration
plant by early next year - possibly in Baltimore's Curtis Bay area.

Production could reach 3.5 million gallons a year - a tiny part of the region's
needs, he said, but a start.

"We believe we have the most economical way to make the novel, efficient
enzymes needed to produce biofuels from cellulosic materials," Hutcheson said.

The 53-year-old Columbia resident took a leave of absence from teaching to get
his new company on its feet, with a boost from the university's MTECH Venture
Accelerator Program.

O'Malley was scheduled to tour Zymetis' lab this morning to highlight the
university's latest spinoff company and the College Park business incubator
program.

"It speaks to the strength of the research institutions we have in our state,
particularly with the [business] incubators within the university system,"
Abbruzzese said.

The Bush administration's goal is to make cellulosic ethanol cost-competitive
with gasoline by 2012 and to produce 3 billion gallons a year by 2015.

Most ethanol today is used as a gasoline additive and is made from sugars found
in corn. Increased demand for corn, combined with government subsidies for
ethanol, have pushed up corn prices and food prices generally around the world.

Ethanol made from cellulose would not impact food prices because it relies on
cellulose from municipal waste, from nonedible plants such as switchgrass, or
from the inedible portions of food plants that now go to waste.

Cellulosic ethanol can be produced with only 10 percent of the energy demanded
by corn-based production. And ethanol has the potential to reduce automotive
greenhouse gas emissions by 86 percent compared with gasoline, according to the
U.S. Department of Energy.

Ethanol produced from corn currently offers only a 19 percent emissions
reduction.

The problem: devising efficient, industrial-scale processes for getting ethanol
from cellulose.

The challenge and the potential payoff have spurred entrepreneurs, academics
and government laboratories around the world to look for the right combination
of enzymes with the lowest cost per gallon of ethanol produced.

"We have done research and development in this area for more than 20 years,
with enzyme development one of the high-priority, critical areas worked on,"
said Valerie Sarisky-Reed, team leader in the Biomass Programs office at the
Department of Energy.

Two weeks ago, the Energy Department announced that it would invest $33.8
million in a 50/50 split with four companies in California and New Jersey that
are working on improved enzyme systems derived from bacteria and fungi.

"There are a lot of organisms out there that break down cellulose," said
Sarisky-Reed. "We need to find out how to take that activity and ... scale it
up."

So far, she said, Zymetis' competitors say they can produce enzymes that cost
30 cents for each gallon of ethanol produced - about the same as Hutcheson
claims for his process.

This price point might already be cost-competitive, given today's record oil
prices - more than $100 a barrel, Sarisky-Reed said.

But the Energy Department has set a much more conservative, "stable-market"
target of $55 a barrel for 2012. To be cost competitive with gasoline from oil
at that price level, she said, "We need these enzyme systems to cost around 10
cents a gallon. So we're not there yet."

S. degradans was discovered in 1986 in the marshes of Mathews County, Va., near
the mouth of the Rappahannock River. A large tract of marsh grass was dying,
and scientists were called to determine whether some sort of pollution was
responsible.

A biologist from George Mason University isolated a curious new bacterium from
the decaying grass and eventually gave a sample to Ron Weiner, a UM colleague
of Hutcheson's.

Thanks to its native microorganisms, the bay marsh has "a very high
productivity, yet very little material accumulates," Hutcheson said.

S. degradans appears to have been be a particularly competent member of that
native waste disposal community, he said. "It's pretty nondescript, a common
variety of bacterium. It's in the same family as E. coli."

That species is commonly found in mammalian digestive tracts. But it is still
not clear where S. degradans came from or where it has gone since then.

Hutcheson has squirreled away frozen repositories of the organism to ensure a
resupply in the event his working batches are swept by a virus or somehow
contaminated.

What makes the stuff remarkable is its ferocious appetite for cellulose. The 70
enzymes that it manufactures are tools for unraveling the complex sugars that
form the tough cellulose in plant cell walls. It's the largest diversity of
such enzymes Hutcheson has ever encountered in one organism.

By the summer of 2006, Hutcheson had found that S. degradans was easy and
inexpensive to grow in the large quantities and high densities that industrial
enzyme production requires.

The bacteria don't need any genetic engineering and can't escape the processing
plant alive because it dies quickly in rain or fresh water.

His team also found that the enzyme mix they extracted - patented as Ethazyme -
could happily digest a tasty batch of processed waste paper.

In 2006, Hutcheson raised a small amount of capital from friends and family,
and from his own pocket, and incorporated as Zymetis Inc.

Through the university's MTECH Venture Accelerator, he got help developing a
financial model and business plan. He established contact with other ethanol
producers and potential business partners, and found guidance with his initial
hiring.

"I'm a research scientist," he said. "I knew at the very beginning I needed
help in this regard. ... The Venture Accelerator played a critical role."

MTECH's Bioprocess Scale-Up Facility also provided expertise in figuring out
how to mass produce the bacteria.

Zymetis has hired Steven Davey, 49, of Ellicott City as his chief operating
officer. He's a chemical engineer with a degree in business finance and a
background with chemical giant W.R. Grace.

Davey said he wanted to work in alternative energy, because it is "a great way
for our country to be self-sufficient from the energy standpoint."

Now, he said, "My job is to do everything I can to get Steve [Hutcheson] back
to the lab."

frank.roylance@baltsun.com
> Read Frank Roylance's blog on MarylandWeather.com

Copyright + 2008, The Baltimore Sun

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