Tailored biofuel compositions could be made using marine bacterium

A marine micro-organism could hold the key to creating a different biofuel composition depending on the industrial application of the energy source being created.

Maryland-based bioscience firm Zymetis has developed ZIP, the Zymetis Integrated Process, which it says uses different strains of its proprietary micro-organism to alter biofuel composition as required.

This allows biomass to be converted into the sugars required to fuel the energy process.

Among the resources that can be used to create fuel are corn cobs, timber waste, switchgrass and other plant life.

Zymetis has now partnered with Genencor to meet three goals: to prove its technology works, to commercialise the process and to forge further alliances elsewhere in the biochemicals sector.

The company is also working with its Ethazyme industrial enzyme-based saccharification product to digest other kinds of waste.

Among these is a tailoring of the enzyme to allow waste paper to be digested into sugars and reused as a source of fuel.