Termites acting as source of inspiration for Bio-Fuel Production Techniques

Termites feed on wood. Some of us are not so happy about that, but the fact remains that they do.

Wood is not a very easy food to digest, it consists of complicated cellulose molecules. And by complicated I mean hard to break down in sugars.  And sugar is what most of the Bio industry thrives on. If we are not burning Biomass, or Refining its oil content we have micro organisms transferring sugar into alcohol (methyl and ethyl).

For example, we are using a lot of corn to product bio fuel. But only the corn itself. The stem, leaves and cop itself are useless in this process. Like wood these pieces of the plant mainly consist of those hard to break cellulose molecules.

So how do the Termites do it? Well actually they are getting help from micro organisms living in their digestive system. A neat trick that is a win for both parties .

Scientists from the US Department of Energy’s Joint Genome Institute have isolated these organisms with the goal to have them do for us what they are doing for our termites. And it works, sofar it the project seems to be successful.

There is a word of caution from director Eddy Ruben from the institute. He says that Termites are capable of transforming a few milligrams of cellulose in their bio reactors. Up scaling to an industrial Bio Fuel Plant is a completely different ballgame.

As a conclusion we can say that although there are challenges ahead science has made a new step toward an ecological sound society.  And although we are not huge supporters of Bio Mass energy it’s still a nice progress.