{"id":121473,"date":"2023-01-25T07:12:00","date_gmt":"2023-01-25T06:12:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/?p=121473"},"modified":"2023-01-23T10:26:01","modified_gmt":"2023-01-23T09:26:01","slug":"speeding-up-sugars-conversion-into-fuel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/speeding-up-sugars-conversion-into-fuel\/","title":{"rendered":"Speeding up sugar’s conversion into fuel"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n
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The research has accelerated the production rate and yield of isobutanol from sugar. \u00a9<\/strong> Adobe<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

By zeroing in on a specific enzyme, a UQ team working in collaboration with the Technical University of Munich (TUM) has sped up the slowest step in processing sugar into a chemical called isobutanol.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Professor Gary Schenk<\/a>\u00a0from UQ\u2019s\u00a0School of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences<\/a>\u00a0said isobutanol from a renewable resource could be used to make fuels, plastics, rubbers and food additives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOur research into this particular enzyme means we can accelerate the production rate and yield of isobutanol from sugarcane, ultimately enabling biomanufacturers to make diverse products at scale sustainably and efficiently,\u201d Professor Schenk<\/strong> said. <\/p>

\u201cUsually during a biomanufacturing process, cells such as yeasts are used as a production platform, but in our research only a small number of a sugar acid-specific dehydratase enzyme was used. <\/p>

\u201cHaving sugar-converting enzymes operate outside a cellular environment meant we could bypass many of the pitfalls of the more traditional cell-based biomanufacturing methods.<\/p>

\u201cThis has led to much higher yields of isobutanol with fewer unwanted side products.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Cell-based production of isobutanol from sugar creates about 25 grams per litre of liquid cell culture but in the UQ study, the cell-free method produced at least 10 times that amount.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe cell-free method gives biomanufacturers more control and results in much higher yields, meaning a higher return on their investment and a more sustainably produced product \u2013 it\u2019s a win-win,\u201d Professor Schenk said.<\/p>

\u201cOne limitation in creating bulk products like aviation fuel with a cell-free process has been the availability of enough enzymes but developments in enzyme engineering and production mean large-scale production is now achievable.<\/p>

\u201cWe\u2019re only at the dawn of what is a very exciting age in this space.\u201d <\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Professor Damian Hine<\/a>\u00a0from UQ\u2019s\u00a0Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Alliance<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0said the research proved the enormous potential of cell-free biomanufacturing.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhile there have been commercial limitations to producing the enzymes, we now have enough evidence to show that large-scale manufacturing using the cell-free enzymes process is commercially viable and should play a major role in future biomanufacturing,\u201d he said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

This research is published in\u00a0Chemistry – a<\/em><\/a>n<\/em><\/a> European Journal<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By zeroing in on a specific enzyme, a UQ team working in collaboration with the Technical University of Munich (TUM) has sped up the slowest step in processing sugar into a chemical called isobutanol. Professor Gary Schenk\u00a0from UQ\u2019s\u00a0School of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences\u00a0said isobutanol from a renewable resource could be used to make fuels, plastics, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","nova_meta_subtitle":"University of Queensland researchers have found a way to more efficiently convert sugarcane into a building block of aviation fuel and other products","footnotes":""},"categories":[5572],"tags":[10794,16380,5838,12858,16209,12472,11966,14589,16759,16792,13015,14131],"supplier":[21645,263,1299],"class_list":["post-121473","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bio-based","tag-aviationfuel","tag-biobased","tag-bioeconomy","tag-enzyme","tag-foodadditives","tag-isobutanol","tag-plastics","tag-renewablefuels","tag-rubbers","tag-saf","tag-sugar","tag-sugarcane","supplier-chemistry-an-european-journal","supplier-technische-universitaet-muenchen","supplier-university-of-queensland-australien"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121473","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=121473"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121473\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=121473"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=121473"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=121473"},{"taxonomy":"supplier","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/supplier?post=121473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}