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Enzyme biotechnology for sustainable resource management
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Burning fuel for transport is the third largest contributor of greenhouse gasses and strategies to eliminate this carbon footprint need to be developed. The by-product of hydrogen fuel consumption is water thus hydrogen is a highly attractive carbon neutral fuel. Current systems that isolate hydrogen are energy intensive and therefore environmentally and economically costly. In addition, the storage of hydrogen presents huge challenges as hydrogen is extremely flammable. In nature, hydrogen can be transformed to formic acid in a benign environment without high energy input. Formic acid, which is not flammable in 85% concentrations, can be treated to re-generate hydrogen fuel in situ. By employing biotechnology, our aim is to mimic the natural enzymatic process to store hydrogen in the safe form of formic acid. Not only will this methodology save energy, the "stored" fuel will then be able to be transported easily and safely.
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Podcast available for the biofuels cluster project
- Growing beyond oil with biofuel - |
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Chris Easton joind the discussion on transforming waste plant material into a sustainable, low-emission fuel for the world's cars, trucks and planes. Please click the banner below to go CSIROpod page.
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Grains Research & Development Corporation (GRDC) Project
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Crop nutrients are a limited resource and a major expense to primary
producers. Their industrial production is extremely energy intensive and a
substantial contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. Using enzyme
biotechnology, we aim to exploit enzyme biotechnology to instead produce
crop nutrients on a large scale using environmentally friendly methods at
a fraction of current production costs.
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![Hye-Kyung Kim](image/hk2.gif) |
Dr. Hye-Kyung Kim (Senior Research Chemist)
Expertise: Engineering and directed evolution of enzymes
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![Apostolos Alissandratos](image/lee.gif) |
Dr. Apostolos Alissandratos (Research Chemist)
Expertise: Enzyme genetic engineering and post-translational chemical modification
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![Hideki Onagi](image/hideki.gif) |
Dr. Hideki Onagi (Research Chemist)
Expertise: HPLC enzyme assay development
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![Daniel Bartkus](image/daniel.gif) |
Mr. Daniel Bartkus (Project Technician)
Expertise: Enzyme kinetics
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Ms. Someyah Fazelinejad
(PhD Student, February 2014-)
Expertise:
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Biochemical processes for generating fuels and commodity chemicals from lignocellulosic biomass..
Philbrook A., Alissandratos A., Easton C.J., Environmental Biotechnology - New Approaches and Prospective Applications. Petre M., ed., InTech: Rijeka, Croatia (2013), Chapter 3, pp. 39-64.
Clostridium carboxidivorans strain P7T recombinant formate dehydrogenase catalyzes reduction of CO2 to formate.
Alissandratos A., Kim H.-K., Matthews H., Hennessy J.E., Philbrook A., Easton C.J., PAppl. Environ. Microbiol. (2013), 79(2), 741-744. DOI: 10.1128/AEM.02886-12
Carbamate kinases from hyperthermophilic bacteria and their use for producing carbamoyl phosphate and urea.
Hennessy J.E., Philbrook A., Bartkus D.M., Easton C.J., Scott C., Oakeshott J.G., Kim H.-K., Latter M.J., International Patent No. WO2012171070 A1. (2012), 64pp.
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Grains Research & Development Corporation (GRDC) Project
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