Source: USA Today
As the search for alternative fuels expands, scientists are exploring myriad possibilities. They revealed progress Thursday using something beachgoers try to avoid: seaweed.
A team with Bio Architecture Lab (BAL), a company based in Berkeley, Calif. announced it has found a way to extract the major sugars in seaweed and convert them into affordable renewable fuels. Its work is featured on the cover of the Jan. 20th edition of Science magazine.
“About 60% of the dry biomass of seaweed are fermentable carbohydrates, and approximately half of those are locked in a single carbohydrate – alginate,” said the company’s CEO Daniel Trunfio. His scientists have engineered an enzyme to degrade the alginate and a pathway to metabolize it.
Read More: Seaweed as biofuel? Scientists find a way
Cartoon by Bob Moran
