Harvard and SunEthanol, Inc. announce collaboration to advance biofuels research

CheckBiotech.com
June 13, 2008

CAMBRIDGE and AMHERST, Mass. - Harvard University’s Office of Technology Development and SunEthanol, Inc., a biofuels technology company, announced yesterday that they have entered into a new research collaboration agreement to further advance a promising approach for deriving ethanol from biomass.

Under the collaboration, Harvard Medical School researchers will work to develop new genetic strains of a proprietary natural bacterium that SunEthanol is using to convert cellulose into ethanol. SunEthanol is developing the “Q Microbe” – which a member of its team discovered near the Quabbin Reservoir in Central Massachusetts – to produce ethanol from a variety of plentiful biomass feedstocks, including switchgrass, corn stover, wheat straw, sugar cane bagasse, and wood pulp.

Importantly, none of these sources of biomass would be diverted from the food supply, addressing a major limitation to the current use of corn to produce ethanol. In addition, using a microbe to break down cellulose, free fermentable sugars, and convert them to ethanol is an efficient process that promises to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 90% or more over gasoline.

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