Ocean 'termites' could be key to biofuels

Science | 206736 hits | Mar 08 7:19 pm | Posted by: Hyack

Once the scourge of the seven seas because of their appetite for wooden sailing ships, gribbles could hold the secret to turning wood into biofuels.

Comments

by GreenTiger
Thu Mar 11, 2010 9:56 am
After the centuries of distruction caused by these organisms it time trey did something useful.
by Bruce_the_vii
Fri Mar 12, 2010 12:06 am
Cellulist ethanol has been produce from enzymes for a few years now. There is a Canadian firm in the running. My understanding is the process is lengthy and you need to do things like recycle the enzemes. It may not work out commercially.

http://www.iogen.ca/

In addition fuel can be made from cellulose by burning it in the presence of water but with insufficient oxygen. It produces something called wood diesel, see Wikipedia. It's inefficiet, produces a litre of fuel from 10 pounds of cellulose - but it's low tech. This is how they produce diesel from coal as well, by incomplete compustion.

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