Testing the feasibility of a new thermophillic strain to improve productivity and economics

该项目涉及利用嗜热微生物从所有类型的生物质中生产乙醇。最近的一项改进是，嗜热菌将所有的糖转化为乙醇--不像酵母只转化C12和C6糖。这使得该技术的目标是额外转化30%的糖，从而增加相同数量的投入生物质的总产出。这个项目是为了测试一种替代的嗜热菌，它有可能比目前的生物体更有效。这种潜在的改良生物已经进行了基因改造，使其在从C5糖和甘油中生产乙醇时更有效率，并减少了不需要的副产品的产生。该项目包括在一系列发酵环境中操作这种改进的微生物，旨在确定其最佳操作条件，从而建立发酵罐设计，使该微生物能够用于改进的生物精炼过程。

This project concerns the use of thermophillic organisms to produce ethanol from all types of biomass. A recent improvement is that the thermophile converts all sugars to ethanol - unlike yeast which only converts C12 and C6 sugars. This gives the technology a target additional 30% of sugars to convert, thus increasing total output from the same volume of input biomass. This project is to test an alternative thermophile which has the potential to be more efficient than the current organism. This potentially improved organism has been genetically modified to make it more efficient in the production of ethanol from C5 sugars and from glycerol, and with less production of unwanted by-products. The project consists of operating this improved organism in a series of fermentation environments aimed at defining its optimum operating conditions, and thus establishing the fermenter design that would be enable this organism to be used in improved biorefining processes.