Aug 10 2010
Gevo, a startup research company in Colorado, has demonstrated the making of jet fuel from plant wastes. The company devised to manufacture yeast that facilitates conversion of cellulose found in plant stalks and wood chips to butanol, a basic element of gasoline, and helps in transforming butanol into jet fuel.
It employed a separate fermentation pathway into yeast to make it work with the stalks and wood chips for the production of butanol. Although it is easier to convert sugar available in sugar cane and starch of corn into butanol, Gevo chose to employ stalks and wood chips due to the abundant availability of raw material.
Inside Gevo Plant
Butanol contains more energy than biofuels such as ethanol and burns more efficiently to offer more mileage per gallon. Unlike biofuel, butanol does not suffer quantity ratio limitations for blending with gasoline. The molecular arrangement of the product allows it to easily fuse with other petroleum fuels and butanol does not absorb water like ethanol and can be easily transported through pipelines.
To increase the product process competence, the company has introduced an exclusive separation technology and produced another product known as isobutanol. To produce isobutanol in larger quantities the company has introduced expertise to extract the fuel through zymosis suspensions before they become toxic to the generated organisms. But this know-how of Gevo is yet to be proved for commercial usage. It has to be seen whether the product can bring down the production cost of isobutanol with that of ethanol or gasoline.