March 15, 2013
IPST Professor Art Ragauskas of Georgia Tech’s School of Chemistry and Biochemistry has been named to a multi-university team conducting a two-year research project that is aimed at engineering a microbe to break lignin down into a lipid, or fat, and then into biodiesel.
According to a recent article in Biodiesel magazine, the research has the potential to make cellulosic ethanol refineries more profitable, while providing new feedstock for biodiesel production growth.
The $2.4 million project recently awarded by the U.S. Department of Energy is headed by Joshua Yuan, a Texas A&M University AgriLife Research plant pathologist. The team includes scientists from Georgia Institute of Technology, University of British Columbia and Washington State University.