UK gets £27m biofuels science centre
29 Jan 2009
The Sustainable Bioenergy Centre will research and develop fuels based on non-food crops, such as willow, industrial and agricultural waste products and inedible parts of crops, such as straw. It is based around six research hubs of academic and industrial partners, based at each of the Universities of Cambridge, Dundee and York and Rothamsted Research and two at the University of Nottingham.
Another seven universities and institutes are involved and 15 industrial partners across the hubs are contributing around £7million of the funding, according to a BBSRC press statement (further details below).
Research will encompass various stages of bioenergy production, from widening the range of materials that can be the starting point for bioenergy to improving the crops used by making them grow more efficiently to changing plant cell walls. The centre will also analyse the economic and environmental life cycle of potential sources of bioenergy.
"The UK has a world leading research base in plant and microbial science. The BBSRC Sustainable Bioenergy Centre draws together some of these world beating scientists in order to help develop technology and understanding to support the sustainable bioenergy sector," said Prof Douglas Kell, BBSRC chief executive.
"By working closely with industrial partners the centre's scientists will be able to quickly translate their progress into practical solutions to all our benefit and ultimately, by supporting the sustainable bioenergy sector, help to create thousands of new 'green collar¹ jobs in the UK."
BSBEC encompasses six programmes:
1 Cell Wall Lignin Programme - Improving barley straw for lignin production and transferring the new knowledge to other crops. Lignin is a polymer in plants that makes it difficult to access sugars for bioenergy production. The programme aims to alter lignin properties in barley to make it easier to produce bioenergy without reducing the quality of the crop.
Partners: University of Dundee with associated programme members: University of York, SCRI and RERAD.
2. Cell Wall Sugars Programme - developing strategies to improve plants and enzymes for increased sugar release from biomass. The programme aims to better understand how sugars are locked into plant cell walls. By doing this we can select the right plants and the right enzymes to release the maximum amount of sugars for conversion to biofuels.
Partners: University of Cambridge with associated programme members: Newcastle University and Novozymes.
3.Lignocellulosic Conversion to Bioethanol (LACE) Programme - using agricultural and wood-industry wastes to create biofuels. The programme is aiming to optimise the release of sugars from plant cell walls to produce afermentable material to produce fuels. It will also work on microbes to efficiently turn the material into fuel.
Partners: University of Nottingham with associated programme members: University of Bath, University of Surrey, BP, Bioethanol Ltd, Briggs of Burton, British Sugar, Coors Brewers, DSM, Ethanol Technology, HGCA, Pursuit Dynamics, SABMiller and Scottish Whisky Research Institute.
4.Marine Wood Borer Enzyme Discovery Programme - New enzymes for the conversion of non-food plant biomass into biofuels from marine wood borers. Wood and straw contain polysaccharides that if converted to simple sugars could be fermented into biofuels. At the moment we do not have suitable enzymes to break down these woody materials. However, marine wood borers consume huge amounts of woody material and their guts have all the enzymes needed to break it down. The programme aims to exploit this.
Partners: University of York with associated programme members: University of Portsmouth and Syngenta Biomass Traits Group.
5.Perennial Bioenergy Crops Programme - optimising biomass yield and composition for sustainable biofuels. The programme aims to improve yields of fast growing trees and grasses and to make more of the plants' carbon available for conversion into biofuels and to do this without increasing inputs such as fertilizers.
Partners: Rothamsted Research with associated programme members: Institute of Biological, Environmental and Rural Sciences (IBERS), Imperial College London, University of Cambridge, and Ceres.
6. Second Generation Sustainable, Bacterial Biofuels Programme - optimising production of the more effective second generation biofuel biobutanol from non-food biomass. Biobutanol is a superior biofuel to ethanol but currently available microbes used in biobutanol production processes are inefficient, produce unwanted by-products and cannot use plant cell walls directly as a feed material. The programme aims to generate and test new bacterial strains to overcome this.
Partners: University of Nottingham with associated programme members: Newcastle University and TMO Renewables.
