Wood-boring crustacean uses enzymes in its gut which could be used to create biofuels from willow and straw, say scientists
Alok Jha, green technology correspondent
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 27 January 2009 16.52 GMT
Limnoria quadripunctata, otherwise known as the gribble. Photograph: Auguste Le Roux
A wood-boring crustacean that spends much of its time munching through the wooden supports that hold up piers could help provide the next breakthrough in green energy. The gribble uses enzymes in its gut to break down wood and scientists want to employ it to produce climate-friendly biofuels from natural products such as willow and straw.
The work will form part of a £27m project to make second-generation biofuels a commercial reality within 10 years. The new biofuels would not lead to a net release of carbon dioxide but also won't compete with land for edible crops. The money will come from the government-backed Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) and a coalition of 15 industrial partners including BP and Ceres.
The cash is aimed at funding research to use plants more efficiently as fuel. The cell walls of plants are made of a complex sugar called cellulose, which is usually mixed with a polymer called lignin. Second-generation biofuels are made by breaking down the cellulose and fermenting it to produce fuels such as ethanol or butanol.
One of the major challenges for biologists is to find chemical enzymes that can efficiently break down cell walls which contain cellulose and lignin. The gribble, a tiny shrimp-like crustacean, seems particularly good at this task. "It's single-handedly responsible for gnawing away at several piers on our south coast and, within its intestinal tract, are enzymes that can unlock some of the polymers [in wood-based materials]," said Professor Katherine Smart, a plant scientist at University of Nottingham and one of the leaders of the project.
First generation biofuels are made from crops that store sugars and starches in their grains. "This has two main problems – it diverts away from the food chain but also it's very energy intensive to grow the crops," said Dr Angela Karp of Rothamsted Research. "You have to grow them every year and it requires a lot of nitrogen fertilisers to grow those grains."
Instead, the BBSRC money will be concentrated on waste materials from normal food crops – wheat straw, spent grain – and also plants that are not grown for food production but still produce a large amount of biomass quickly, such as willows and grasses.
Karp said: "When you look at the overall energy balance of getting energy out of this kind of second-generation system, the gains in terms of energy and reductions in terms of greenhouse gases you can achieve and the waste of food crops far exceed the biofuels you can get from maize."
Smart said there was much to be done in improving the efficiency in extracting a plant's cellulose and then converting it into alcohol. "At the moment we can produce 19g of ethanol from 100g of straw. Based on the current amount of straw not used currently that means we have between 8-10bn tonnes of straw available in the UK for this kind of conversion. That could produce about a 10% of current use of petrol."
Karp said the research would additionally focus on finding ways to grow these plants on the marginal land – Karp said there were at least 3m hectares in the UK that could be turned over for this purpose – and also in selecting varieties that grew the most biomass in the quickest time.
The government's target is to source 10% of UK's energy needs from biofuels by 2010, part of an ambition to reduce carbon emissions by 80% by 2050. Announcing the money at a briefing today, the government's science minister Paul Drayson, who races cars powered by second generation biofuels, said: "Investment in science and innovation are going to be what gets us out of the global economic downturn. This £27m investment represents a real example of where research has the potential to address one of the biggest challenges of our time, climate change, but also an area where the UK has real strength."
Alok Jha, green technology correspondent
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 27 January 2009 16.52 GMT
Limnoria quadripunctata, otherwise known as the gribble. Photograph: Auguste Le Roux
A wood-boring crustacean that spends much of its time munching through the wooden supports that hold up piers could help provide the next breakthrough in green energy. The gribble uses enzymes in its gut to break down wood and scientists want to employ it to produce climate-friendly biofuels from natural products such as willow and straw.
The work will form part of a £27m project to make second-generation biofuels a commercial reality within 10 years. The new biofuels would not lead to a net release of carbon dioxide but also won't compete with land for edible crops. The money will come from the government-backed Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) and a coalition of 15 industrial partners including BP and Ceres.
The cash is aimed at funding research to use plants more efficiently as fuel. The cell walls of plants are made of a complex sugar called cellulose, which is usually mixed with a polymer called lignin. Second-generation biofuels are made by breaking down the cellulose and fermenting it to produce fuels such as ethanol or butanol.
One of the major challenges for biologists is to find chemical enzymes that can efficiently break down cell walls which contain cellulose and lignin. The gribble, a tiny shrimp-like crustacean, seems particularly good at this task. "It's single-handedly responsible for gnawing away at several piers on our south coast and, within its intestinal tract, are enzymes that can unlock some of the polymers [in wood-based materials]," said Professor Katherine Smart, a plant scientist at University of Nottingham and one of the leaders of the project.
First generation biofuels are made from crops that store sugars and starches in their grains. "This has two main problems – it diverts away from the food chain but also it's very energy intensive to grow the crops," said Dr Angela Karp of Rothamsted Research. "You have to grow them every year and it requires a lot of nitrogen fertilisers to grow those grains."
Instead, the BBSRC money will be concentrated on waste materials from normal food crops – wheat straw, spent grain – and also plants that are not grown for food production but still produce a large amount of biomass quickly, such as willows and grasses.
Karp said: "When you look at the overall energy balance of getting energy out of this kind of second-generation system, the gains in terms of energy and reductions in terms of greenhouse gases you can achieve and the waste of food crops far exceed the biofuels you can get from maize."
Smart said there was much to be done in improving the efficiency in extracting a plant's cellulose and then converting it into alcohol. "At the moment we can produce 19g of ethanol from 100g of straw. Based on the current amount of straw not used currently that means we have between 8-10bn tonnes of straw available in the UK for this kind of conversion. That could produce about a 10% of current use of petrol."
Karp said the research would additionally focus on finding ways to grow these plants on the marginal land – Karp said there were at least 3m hectares in the UK that could be turned over for this purpose – and also in selecting varieties that grew the most biomass in the quickest time.
The government's target is to source 10% of UK's energy needs from biofuels by 2010, part of an ambition to reduce carbon emissions by 80% by 2050. Announcing the money at a briefing today, the government's science minister Paul Drayson, who races cars powered by second generation biofuels, said: "Investment in science and innovation are going to be what gets us out of the global economic downturn. This £27m investment represents a real example of where research has the potential to address one of the biggest challenges of our time, climate change, but also an area where the UK has real strength."
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