Patent granted for next generation biofuels project in Wisconsin

Next generation biofuels research at the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Centre in Wisconsin, US has been awarded its first patent.

The Centre has been working with biotechnology provider Lucigen’s renewable fuels division C5-6 Technologies and the patent covers their research into a heat-resistant enzyme that breaks down sugars found inside the cells of plants, which can then be made into biofuel.

Intellectual property manager David Pluymers at the Centre was quoted as saying: ‘It's a good technology and, as much as anything, it marks an important milestone for us as we’ve been at this for nearly five years now.’

The Centre's overall mission is to find and develop technologies that can enable transportation fuels to be made affordably from plants that aren't also food sources. The new patent concerns an isolated enzyme that is found in bacteria from remote hot springs in Russia.

Lucigen and C5-6 were founding partners of the Centre, which was opened by the US Department of Energy in 2007 with an initial grant of $125 million (€98.4 million).