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Australia and Korea Partner on BioButanol for Chemical Industry
29 July 2008
The University of Queensland (UQ), Australian sugar company CSR and the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) have formed the Korea-Australia Bio-Product Alliance to assist the A$1.5 trillion chemical industry to switch its dependence from fossil fuels to renewable biomass. With a specific focus on sugarcane as the raw material for biorefineries, it is the first alliance to target development of sucrose-based biorefinery technology.
UQ Vice-Chancellor Professor Paul Greenfield said the technical goal includes technology to produce cost-effective, sustainable butanol for chemical manufacturing.
Butanol was the world’s second-largest industrial biotechnology product until World War II, but then advances in petrochemical technology made it uneconomical. The alliance will use modern metabolic engineering to develop new cost-effective, sustainable processes for use of butanol in chemical production.
—Professor Greenfield
KAIST researchers will work with experts from UQ’s Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology, the UQ-based Cooperative Research Centre for Sugar Industry Innovation through Biotechnology (CRC SIIB), and CSR.
July 29, 2008 in Brief | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)
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Posted by: swen | July 29, 2008 at 01:20 PM
Check that: Read "Biobutanol" for "Ethanol".
Biobutanol has properties more similar to
Petrol.
Posted by: swen | July 29, 2008 at 01:22 PM
All the biofuels are OK if they are backed up with economy as well - i.e. a Suburban running on biobutanol is a disgrace, a Fit running on it would be OK.
The advantage of butanol, I guess is it can be mixed with gasoline and transported by pipeline etc - more easily than ethanol.
Posted by: mahonj | July 29, 2008 at 01:53 PM
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Australia ranks 9th in World sugar production,
and is 3rd in sugar exports. They export more
than they use. Maybe they're going to keep
more at home now for ethanol production, or
perhaps increase yield. They're about 5th
lowest-cost producer.