Доктор, это уже оно?

[pargentum]

Scientists find bugs that eat waste and excrete petrol - Times Online:

Because crude oil (which can be refined into other products, such as petroleum or jet fuel) is only a few molecular stages removed from the fatty acids normally excreted by yeast or E. coli during fermentation, it does not take much fiddling to get the desired result.
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The company is not interested in using corn as feedstock []. Instead, different types of agricultural waste will be used according to whatever makes sense for the local climate and economy: wheat straw in California, for example, or woodchips in the South.

Using genetically modified bugs for fermentation is essentially the same as using natural bacteria to produce ethanol, although the energy-intensive final process of distillation is virtually eliminated because the bugs excrete a substance that is almost pump-ready.

The closest that LS9 has come to mass production is a 1,000-litre fermenting machine, which looks like a large stainless-steel jar, next to a wardrobe-sized computer connected by a tangle of cables and tubes. It has not yet been plugged in. The machine produces the equivalent of one barrel a week and takes up 40 sq ft of floor space.

via /. http://hardware.slashdot.org/hardware/08/06/16/0451237.shtml

Только непонятно.  Вроде бы упоминающиеся в статье E. coli и дрожди не умеют разлагать целлюлозу? Или они имеют в виду процесс, аналогичный производству гидролизного спирта, когда целлюлозу кислотой разлагают до глюкозы, а потом отдают дрождям?

Comments

[stas]

Любопытно. Вейцман, в свое время, за несколько лет технологию производства ацетона ферментацией отладил до промышленных мастшабов. Поглядим, что годика через 3-4 будет слышно. Хотя там дело о военке шло, тут может помедленнее выйти.