Renewable petroleum one step closer to reality

Washington: Scientists are a key step closer to making renewable
petroleum fuels using bacteria, sunlight and dioxide.

University of Minnesota graduate student Janice Frias made the
critical step by figuring out how to use a protein to transform fatty
acids produced by the bacteria into ketones, which can be cracked to
make hydrocarbon fuels.

Aditya Bhan and Lanny Schmidt, chemical engineering professors in the
College of Science and Engineering, are turning the ketones into
diesel fuel using catalytic technology they have developed.

The ability to produce ketones opens the door to making petroleum-like
hydrocarbon fuels using only bacteria, sunlight and carbon dioxide.

Larry Wackett, Distinguished McKnight Professor of Biochemistry is the
principal investigator for the study.

They are the only group using a photosynthetic bacterium and a
hydrocarbon-producing bacterium together to make hydrocarbons from
carbon dioxide.

The team is using Synechococcus, a bacterium that fixes carbon dioxide
in sunlight and converts CO2 to sugars.

Next, they feed the sugars to Shewanella, a bacterium that produces
hydrocarbons. This turns CO2, a greenhouse gas produced by combustion
of fossil fuel petroleum, into hydrocarbons.

The research has been published in the April 1 issue of the Journal of
Biological Chemistry.