“These molecules contained just enough oxygen that we could readily convert them to larger more useful molecules using metal nanoparticle catalysts.
“The biorenewable molecules that Professor Chang’s group made were perfect raw materials for catalytic refining,” said Dauenhauer, who was one of the co-authors of the research study. The microbes were optimized through genetic engineering so that they can ‘grow’ these molecules from sugar.Ĭhang said the target molecule was designed to have oxygen left in strategic positions to make the downstream conversion more efficient for a group of researchers led by University of Minnesota Chemical Engineering and Materials Science Professor Paul Dauenhauer. Professor Chang’s group developed a unique strain of Escherichia coli that converted glucose to eight- and 10-carbon hydroxy-acids, which are molecules with only a few oxygen atoms at the end of the chain. “We optimized the chemistry to take advantage of the unique capabilities of molecular biology, after which we could solve the rest of the problem with metal nanoparticle catalysts.” “Our insight early on was that we needed to find a molecule that could be readily made with fermentation that could strip most oxygen from glucose,” said Michelle Chang, a Professor of Chemistry and Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of California Berkeley and leader of the project. In the second step, metal oxide catalysts stripped the remaining oxygen and combined molecules together to make a useful distribution of olefins that are the building blocks of the chemical industry.
First, glucose obtained from plants was fermented with microbes to remove most of the oxygen. Researchers at the NSF Center for Sustainable Polymers discovered an optimal technology to make sustainable liquids similar to those obtained from petroleum by combining two normally independent technologies. In order to use plants to make new materials, both problems must be solved-the conversion process needs to strip oxygen atoms from the glucose, and molecules must be combined to make larger products. The key sugar in plants is glucose, which contains too much oxygen and at six carbons is too small for many important applications. It has been difficult for scientists to use plants as a source for plastics because they are mostly made up of sugars which are nothing like the molecules obtained from petroleum.
The new study by scientists at the University of California Berkeley and the University of Minnesota is published online in Nature Chemistry, a leading peer-reviewed chemistry journal by Nature Publishing Group. These renewable liquids could serve as a more sustainable replacement for today’s fossil fuels used to make everyday products like plastic containers and bags, automobile parts, lubricants, and soaps. National Science Foundation Center for Sustainable Polymers based at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities have developed a chemical technology of combined fermentation and chemical refining that can produce petroleum-like liquids from renewable plants.
0 kommentar(er)
