DOE Technology Leads to Biofuels Pilot Plant

Summary

Joule Biotechnologies Inc. just announced expansion to the pilot plant stage of their process for producing biodiesel fuel using engineered microbes. Their approach involves photosynthetic microbes that use CO₂ to produce a biodiesel fuel. The microbes have been genetically engineered so that their cell walls leak the biodiesel product, which floats to the surface of the process system, and is then easily removed from the reactor. This avoids the need for an expensive process to separate the biodiesel from the microbes, a handicap of first generation biofuel production systems. The new approach benefits from technologies developed at the DOE/BER funded Systems Biology Center, a joint venture of MIT and the Harvard Medical School. Center Director George Church leads Joule’s scientific advisory board, and a current Joule employee comes from the Center staff.