Biofuels from Waste
Purpose
Biofuels mark a great step into today’s efforts to slow down global warming. However, when food sources, such as corn and soy are used as derivatives for ethanol, the impact is far worse than using fossil fuels. Biofuels require more energy to do artificial refinery, cultivating, and collecting; whereas, fossil fuels already meet all the prerequisites through millions of years in the earth, and thus use less energy. On the social justice stance, the poor suffer through the sky-rocketed food prices because farmers are using their food to supply the ethanol demand. As technology becomes more efficient, society can rely on a source of energy that deters global warming, uses less energy to process, and betters the world economy.
Question
Which specific cellulase from fungi breaks down bleached paper waste efficiently?
Why?
Bleached paper is solely composed of cellulose (20-25%) which it makes it an ideal source for fuel because its lack in lignin makes it more efficient in the refinery process.
Fungi serve as vital decomposers in the natural world. By channeling this idea to break down paper waste into sugars, the possibilities are endless.
Terms to know
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Cellulase are enzymes that break down cellulose. Fungi and bacteria have special enzymes that are designed to decompose material.
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His-tag is a tag that helps the identification process by attaching to a protein. A His-tag is a small tag that aids the purification process by binding with a nickel NTA matrix.
Materials
-Agar plates
-Sterile q-tips
-Yeast
-Incubator
-Bleached paper waste
-Fungi
-PCR
-Primers
-Blue dye
-Plasmid: pTrcHis-Topo
-Wash buffer
-Elution buffer
-LB broth
-E.Coli competent cells
-Ice
-Water
-Filter
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...15 July 2008.
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The U.S. government spends billions of dollars every year subsidizing corn production, livestock feed, processed foods, and ethanol production account for the greatest uses of corn in the United States. Supplying the livestock and processed food industries with cheap corn ultimately leads to an American diet that is heavily based on the consumption of meat and sugary processed foods. This diet is thought to contribute to America’s obesity epidemic. Corn subsidies also encourage production of ethanol. Ethanol may be no better than fossil fuels because of the required energy inputs and the environmental damage caused by its production.
To support this claim, Kingsolver offers multiple statistics that the average American consumer would be unaware of. For example, Kingsolver states that “the average food item on a U.S. grocery shelf has traveled farther than most families go on their annual vacations,” which allows her to bring into light the largest and unexpected economic impact of food: Oil (Kingsolver 4). Fossil fuels “were consumed for the food’s transport, refrigeration, and processing,” and Kingsolver later mentions that “synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides use oil and natural gas as their starting materials, and in their manufacturing” (Kingsolver 5). Kingsolver then asserts that our dependence on nonrenewable resources, like the scarce rain in Tucson or the foreign fossil fuels used in food production, needs to end because “we are going to run out of them” (Kingsolver 21).
Humans are damaging the planet to live comfortably, we must change the way food is distributed worldwide, support local farmers and switch to a healthier diet in order to stop global warming. The current global has been getting better for us humans over the years, from eating bread and eggs 3 times a day in the XV century, now we can eat better than the kings of those times, however the much of the food in not healthy and the global food system still fails in getting food to every individual in the planet and in addition it contributes to the destruction of our world. Ms. Anna Lappe explains how the food system contributes to around 1/3 of the global warming issue in her essay “The Climate Crisis at the End of Our Fork”, while a group of Plos one explains the issues about the export and import of food growth over the last 50 years in the
Modern biotechnology was born at the hands of American scientists Herb Boyer and Stain Cohen, when they developed “recombinant deoxyribonucleotide, (rDNA), [1] for medicinal purposes. Subsequently, biotechnologists started genetically engineering agricultural plants using this technology. A single gene responsible for a certain trait, from one organism (usually a bacterium) is selected altered and then ‘spliced” into the DNA of a plant to create an agricultural crop consisting of that...
Cellulosic ethanol will not be able to meet its mandated output because in the past four years since demonstration and pilot sites started popping up it has only just started t...
Cellulases are o- glycosyl hydrolases (GHs) that hydrolyse β-1,4 glucosidic bonds in cellulose. Cellulase system is grouped into “glycoside hydrolases (GH) family” classified by different means, according to their substrate specifities, reaction, mechanisms or structural similarities. The cellulase complex is found to contain three basic components which may be present either as single polypeptide or can be grouped together into multienzyme complex known as cellulosome. Cellulase system is composed of three main classes based on their activity toward a wide range of substrates. This is rather difficult, since the enzymes have overlapping specificities toward substrates which themselves are poorly defined. The three main classes are:
“All Biofuels Are Not Created Equal” is a very informative article that everyone should be aware of. The authors of this article show how biofuels can be made to benefit Earth. Our ecological footprint is so big that everyone requires 2.5 Earths to maintain the same lifestyle. What does this reveal? It reveals that Earth’s resources are being diminished. This means that the world needs to do something to prevent this so Earth can last for future generations. The way that biofuels are being made is not very effective in helping this problem. This is because it either requires deforestation or the burning of fossil fuels, which the world is trying to stop. Instead of using corn or sugar cane as ethanol, alternative crops should be used because it will benefit our environment the most.
Cushman, Lynd, Nichols, Wyman. “Fuel Ethanol from Cellulosic Biomass.” Science. March 1991. Vol 251 (4999):1321
Introduction:The idea of biofuels is a old concept, reaching as far as the ending of the 19th century. Solid in its idea but flawed in its presentation. Biofuels are a alternative energy to fossil fuels that are made from natural methods such as plants and crops and are key in solving the apparent flaws of fossil fuels. While fossil fuels have been in use for over a century, Biofuels have now risen to the popularity and been exposed to the press. At one point of time biofuel were being considered by some of the most brilliant minds ever in human history such as Henry Ford and Rudolph Diesel who believed that biofuels had the potential to be the new evolution s on only to reappear a century later. Now the world faces the struggles of global warming and the depletion of fossil fuels slowly dimming by day. Throughout the last century biofuels have proven to have a place in our society as a new alternative fuel source. Specializing in Being Natural and healthier than fossil fuels, biofuels have had a rough beginning against its competitor due to key situations such as pricing, Side effects, to fuel power. However the idea was passed on a to the later generations, and continued to pasand prolong usage. However through the last decade they have been highly advertised by politicians and Government officials claiming it to be the future of a powerful working society, and to help in making a new energy free world. Through belief Some even claiming that “By 2050, a new generation of sustainable biofuels could provide over a quarter of the world’s total transport fuel, according to a recent report by the International Energy Agency” (last name). With such improvement biofuels should be the obvious answer to providing a better future to th...
Enzymes, such as cellulases, which catalyse the breakdown of cellulose, have been isolated from several different organisms, including fungi. However, the purification of enzyme from these sources is expensive, on the order of $5.50 per gallon of ethanol produced. Genetic engineering or biotechnology has already played a key enabling role in the development of cellulosic biomass conversion technologies by dramatically reducing the cost of cellulase production from about $5.50 per gallon of ethanol to $0.10-15 per gallon of
The preparation of making wood into a pulp for papermaking is accomplished in two different ways. In the groundwood process, blocks of wood are held against a fast revolving grindstone that shreds off short wood fibbers from the block. The fibbers produced by this process are short and are used only in the production of cheap newsprint and used to be added with other types of wood fibber in the making of high-quality paper. Another technique uses a chemical-solvent processes where wood chips are treated with solvents that remove “resinous material and lignin” from the wood, leaving pure fibbers of cellulose.
Lemaux, P.G. (2006). Introduction to genetic modification. Agricultural Biotechnology in California Series, 8178. Retrieved from http://ucanr.org/freepubs/docs/8178.pdf
present at all times but it must retain some of them. All plant life on Earth benefits from the ability of water to make a hydrogen bond with another substance of similar electronegative charge. Cellulose, the substance that makes up cell walls and paper products, is a hydrophilic substance ("water-loving"). It interacts with water but, unlike other hydrophilic substances, it will not dissolve in it. Cellulose can form strong hydrogen bonds with water molecules. This explains why a paper towel will "wick" water upwards when it comes in contact with it.
Some of the ways we try to combat Climate Change differes from region to region and culure to culture. One of the remedies that seems to be adapting all around the world is the use of biofuels instead of using fossil fuels. People believe that instead of digging up and using oil and petroleum, our best solution to combat greenhouse gases emitted by fossil fuels is to plant soybeans, sugar cane, palm oil and use that as a replacement. More cars are flex fuled, and use ethenol mixed with petroleum to lessen the use of oil since oil prices are only going to increase with the decreasing amount that is
More farmers are now planting crops for biofuel, resulting to an intense drop in food production. According to experts this promising alternative energy source is seemingly causing a global decrease of food supply. As the demand for biofuels increases, more industrialized countries are offering encouragements and subsidizing farmers to grow crops for fuel rather than for food. The biofuel production method was also anticipated to be carbon neutral, as the crops would absorb the carbon dioxide released when the biofuel was burned. However crops for fuel are now grown at such a rate that they need more energy to cultivate, grow and harvest. By the time it reaches households, it would have consumed more energy and released more greenhouse causing substances than the feared fossil fuels would have. The fact that emissions are released during production, processing, fertilizer application and as a result of land use change is highly ignored. Somehow biofuels can sidetrack less harmful and clean resources like renewable energies such as solar and wind energy. Large scale cultivation of biofuel crops, unlike small scale, locally produced and biofuel owned farms are commonly challenged by problems such as severe use of water, chemicals, fertilizers and pesticides. These also often lead to pollution, depleting and degrading available water resources which can cause famines. According to contrary believe of analysts, it has also shown that there is not enough farming land on earth to produce biofuel crops to meet the huge energy needs encouraged by our current and unmaintainable ways of living. http://www.greenerideal.com/science/0516-biofuels/ &