Lab finds new method to turn biomass into gasoline

By Jasmin Melvin

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. scientists have combined a discovery from a French garbage dump with breakthroughs in synthetic biology to come up with a novel method for turning plant waste into gasoline, without the need of any food sources.

A synthetic biology lab at the University of California San Francisco identified a compound able to use biomass to produce a gas that can be converted into a gasoline chemically indistinguishable from fossil-fuel based petroleum.

Their method allows for a variety of feedstocks to be used that are nonfood sources, such as agricultural waste products like corn stover and sugar cane bagasse.

Critics charge that making ethanol from corn helps drive up food prices and is not an environmentally sound way to produce a so-called green fuel.

The scientists said gasoline they were able to produce carried the same chemical and molecular makeup as gasoline from oil refineries.

"You could fill your car up with it right now, so there's no difference in engine technology or anything like that," said Chris Voigt, who led the research.

Voigt added that the United States could look to biological sources for a large percentage of its gasoline when oil prices are high.

"Then if the sugar price goes high and the oil price goes down, you could flip it and the consumer would not know any difference," he said. "You can't do that with ethanol."