Our overall aim is the pilot-scale development of a microbial based process able to convert rice straw-derived sugars into the advanced biofuels butanol and alkanes.
MAJOR OBJECTIVES
- identification and characterisation of biomass processing enzymes for the deconstruction of pre-treated rice straw
- design and implementation of metabolic pathways for the production of advanced biofuels in Geobacillus, and;
- process development scale-up of engineered strains resulting from (ii) using sugar-rich hydrolysate feedstocks that arise from the outputs of (i)