SCIENCE IN THE NEWS DAILY
Newly Uncovered Enzymes Turn Corn Plant Waste into Biofuel
from Scientific American
"Visualize three tons of moldy bread." It's not the most appealing image, perhaps, but it's a description of the moist mound of growth media tended by bioscientist Cliff Bradley and his partner, chemical engineer Bob Kearns at their biofuel facility in Butte, Mont., that could help cut ethanol costs at the fuel pump.
Selected soil fungi that eat cellulose--the hard-to-digest, structural component of woody plants--thrive on the big pile of putrefaction from which Bradley and Kearns harvest certain powerful enzymes.
The special enzymes allow standard biofuel plants to produce ethanol at lower cost by replacing some of the high-priced corn (starch) they process with cheaper corn stover "waste"--the leaves, stalks, husks and cobs of the maize plant itself.
Read more...
Click here to listen to podcasts of American Scientist Pizza Lunches, informal lectures where scientists present new research to non-scientists. Originally intended for science communicators in the Research Triangle Park region of North Carolina, the audio slideshows are now available to anyone online. New talks are posted periodically during the academic year.
Science in the Media
Newspapers:
Magazines and Web Sites:
The Science-Media Intersection:
Subscribe to Our Content!
Visit our RSS Feeds page to choose among 13 customized feeds, or create a free My AmSci account to request an email notice whenever a specified author, department or discipline appears online.