Waste crop biofuel could combat fossil fuel dependency
14 Nov 2013
Researchers from the University of Nottingham and the International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology have received funding to begin work of processes that could produce biofuel from waste rice crops.
The scientists will collaborate on the £1.4 million project to engineer enzymes, bacteria and bioconversion processes necessary if advancing the production of “waste-to-fuel” biofuel is to be achieved and fossil fuel dependency issues are to be tackled.
[Burning rice straw] is wasteful and polluting, particularly if rice straw could be used to create biofuels
Prof Nigel Minton
The research team, led by Prof Nigel Minton and Dr Syed Shams Yazdani, will seek to use synthetic biology as a means of designing bacterial strains capable of converting the waste straw into biofuel.
Prof Nigel Minton said: “Rice straw, left over from rice harvests in large quantities, doesn’t have many agricultural uses and so hundreds of millions of tons is burned to dispose of it each year. This is wasteful and polluting, particularly if rice straw could be used to create biofuels.”
Once the correct mixture of enzymes has been created, the research team will use it to deconstruct rice straw into the necessary raw materials for biofuel production.
