In the United Kingdom, researchers found a way to lower the high-water water footprint of bioethanol, which uses an estimated 1,388 to 9,812 liters of freshwater for every liter of bioethanol produced. They used seawater and a novel marine yeast strain ‘Saccharomyces cerevisiae AZ65’ to reduce the water footprint of bioethanol. While using seawater for bioethanol production has been looked into before, this time researchers used a yeast strain that wasn’t as sensitive to salt and thus didn’t require desalination.
Results revealed that S. cerevisiae AZ65 had a significantly higher osmotic tolerance when compared with the terrestrial reference strain. Their results demonstrated that seawater can substitute freshwater for bioethanol production without compromising production efficiency. Results also revealed that marine yeast is a potential candidate for use in the bioethanol industry especially when using seawater or high salt-based fermentation media.