The Q Microbe, named after its home, Quabbin Reservoir, can produce large amounts of ethanol with almost any cellulosic feedstock. Not only that, but the microbe produces its own enzymes and combines the enzymatic breakdown of sugars and fermentation to ethanol into one step. It requires no additional enzymes to carry out the process. “We realized we had something that could really be useful,” Leschine says. “We were doing an experiment for a completely different reason and we realized that the Q Microbe could produce lots of ethanol.”
Researchers working with the microbe announced in July that they’ve achieved production of 70 grams of ethanol per liter of fermentation broth in the lab, surpassing the commercial production threshold of 50 grams per liter. That translates to about 9 percent ethanol by volume, according to Leschine, who has studied microbes for more than 40 years, the past 30 at UMASS. “It’s really over the hurdle to be cost-effective,” she says. “As far as we know, no one else in the world has achieved that,” says Bill Frey, president and CEO of Qteros, a company founded to commercialize the microbe and its beneficial traits. “We’ve been able to achieve this through process improvement combined with the microbe’s abilities,” he adds.
Article Continues After Advertisement
The Q Microbe was discovered as part of a survey to understand the diversity of microbes that can break down plant material without oxygen. Less than one-tenth of 1 percent of the microbes that exist is known, Leschine says, adding that the microbial world is an amazing resource. “This was a sample that yielded a microbe very different from any other,” she says. “It was a big surprise after looking all over the world, to find it just next door.” The manmade Quabbin Reservoir is 10 miles from Leschine’s lab and supplies water to Boston. It has served that function since the 1930s and still is one of the largest unfiltered drinking water supplies in the world.
Economics and Scalability
The two most important factors for Qteros to succeed in reaching commercial scale with the microbe’s abilities are economics and scalability, both Frey and Qteros Executive Vice President Jef Sharp agree. “To have an impact on something as large as the planet’s climate, scalability and economics is important,” Sharp says. He adds that it needs to be capable of scaling up relatively simply. “Simplicity is very good with commodity production of anything,” he says.
“One of the most exciting parts of scalability is being able to use different crops,” Frey says, adding that it opens up possibilities for commercialization in different areas. The Qteros research team has experimented with corn stover, sugarcane, woody biomass and energy crops. Sharp adds the team is working with some other feedstocks, but declines to disclose them.
The research team currently operates out of a lab in Marlborough, Mass. The lab has the capacity to produce up to 100 liters of ethanol, Sharp says. “There’s a lot going on in the lab,” he says. “It’s very exciting.” Leschine still works as a consultant for the company, but continues to work at the university, where she does some Qteros-sponsored research. The company also has a license agreement with the university. Tentatively, Qteros plans to have an internal pilot facility completed this year and running in 2010, an integrated pilot in 2010 and a facility demonstrating and producing ethanol in 2011, Frey says. They most likely will be at different locations, he adds. The industrial biomass pretreatment phase will be somewhere in western Massachusetts, according to Sharp. The pretreatment phase is proprietary and not yet perfected, he adds.
The business endeavor began after Leschine and Sharp met through a mutual acquaintance, she recalls. Her team had discovered that the only way to realize the Q Microbe’s commercial potential was to start a company devoted to it, she says. The answer seemed to be SunEthanol Inc., which would change its name to Qteros. “They had just come together to develop green technology,” she says of Sharp and his colleagues at Sun-Ethanol. “It was really serendipitous.”
A few different elements attracted Sharp to the venture, he says, including the microbe itself. “Its uniqueness and very early signs that it wanted to produce ethanol when our world needs renewable fuels,” he lists as an attraction. Leschine’s experience and expertise also had a positive influence. “She’s great,” he says. “She’s very knowledgeable. She understood the impact that this could have.”
Leschine thinks the collaboration was perfect because she has no experience in the business start-up world. “This business thing is a whole new world to me,” she says. “They have to move fast and they do. It’s a very interdisciplinary approach. I don’t think I could do that. I’m still interested in the basic science.”
| 1 2 | Next Page --> | |
| View Entire Article | ||