TMO Renewables launches process to produce celluloic ethanol with bacteria

Audeamus reports on an English company, TMO Renewables, which is moving towards commercial production bacteria that ingests organic waste and excretes ethanol. The bacteria, known as TM242, is one of the more promising approaches to cellulosic ethanol production.The company is also researching a bacteria discovered in Monserrat in the 1990s that ingests vegetable oil and methanol and excretes biodiesel.

The commercial success of TMO’s efforts will be open to debate for some time, but we continue to see innovative methods for increasing yield, adding new feedstocks and decreasing production cost of biofuels.

The TMO Renewables process uses heat-loving bacteria that produce ethanol when heated to a temperature of 150 degrees fahrenheit. TMO has not released figures on the yield of efficiency of its process.

Biofuels Digest has previously reported on room-temperature biodiesel production techniques based on fungi.

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