Turning Bacteria into Plastic Factories

jerry submitted, created time 1 month 4 weeks (www.sciam.com)

Plastics are one of the most versatile and useful things that can be made from expensive fossil fuels. ...except as of now, it's "that can be made from expensive fossil fuels and genetically engineered E. coli." A new company has found a way to produce polymers from genetically engineered microbes that feed on sugars, replacing fossil-fuel based processes.

The plastic in question is called butanediol, and the process has been in the works for some time. The trick was getting the bacteria to tolderate high levels of butanediol in the water. It's usually toxic.

E. coli can be grown on a large scale relatively easily. There's even an existing infrastructure that could be adapted at little cost--the fermentation tanks that are presently used to brew ethanol from corn. On the other side, the price of butanediol just jumped from $1 to $1.22 USD per pound for bulk orders, in step with the rise in oil prices.

Because this has been an in-lab project, it's hard to tell how much it would cost to produce plastics this way on a large scale in the real world--in currency. In energy, the matter is easier to predict. Even including all the background costs, like trucking in the sugar and cellulose for the bacteria to eat, Coli-brand plastics take about 30% fewer BTU's than the current traditional method.

A pilot plant may be up as early as next year. And they're talking about expanding into other kinds of plastics.

Keywords: fossil fuels polymers plastics engineered microbes economics alternative fuels genetic engineering