Alberta

From 2007.igem.org

Revision as of 20:40, 3 July 2007

The Offical Wiki of the 2007 University of Alberta iGEM Team

Edmonton, Alberta, Canada

Background: Biofuels

With growing concerns in the global energy market there has been a continual push for the development of renewable energy sources. Specifically, two fuels have dominated the media: biodiesel and ethanol. However, both of these fuels have shortcomings in terms of being a viable fuel source.

Biodiesel is a fuel produced from the vegetable oils of crops that can be used in an engine system very similar to a traditional diesel engine. However, vegetable oils in crops only make up a small portion of the biomass of the plants, ultimately producing low yields of fuel per acre of crops. As such, it is more economically sound to use these resources for food production.

There has been huge attention to the use of ethanol in the typical auto cycle engine. In many places it is already being blended with gasoline to create a hybrid fuel source. However, running an engine on pure ethanol is beset by several major obstacles. Firstly, ethanol is miscible with water at any concentration, which creates long term storage corrosion issues. In addition, ethanol engines must be designed to expect water vapor unlike their gasoline counterparts. Ethanol also has significantly different thermodynamic properties than gasoline such as a lower energy density and different vapor properties, which would reduce the economical advantage of using ethanol as a primary fuels source.

We propose using a different fuels source to eventually replace gasoline, butanol. Butanol is a superior to ethanol as a replacement for petroleum gasoline. With a low vapor pressure, high energy density, and a gasoline-like octane rating, it can be blended into existing gasoline at much higher proportions than ethanol without compromising performance, mileage, cold starting, or volatile organic pollution standards. Blending butanol with gasoline also prevents modifications of the fuel-air ratio and modifications to the fuel system. Butanol also is immiscible with water at concentrations higher than 7%, alleviating storage concerns.

More information on the summary of biofuels viability and the inspiration to our project can be found here.

The Project: Plan B

We propose the use of butanol as the leading biofuel for use in internal combustion engines. Specifically, we intend to genetically engineer E.coli bacteria to convert biomasses into butanol for use as an energy source. This will be accomplished by introducing the genes responsible for butanol production in Clostridium acetobutylicum into E.coli. Furthermore, we hope to increase the E.coli's tolerance to solvents such as butanol.

More information on the technical details can be found here.

Calendar

Butanerd Event Calendar can be found below:

June 2007

July 2007

August 2007

Discussion Board

[http://butanerds.myfreeforum.org The Butanerd Online Forum] is up and running. Feel free to post and check for posts here. Make sure you register!

Protocols

Coming soon!

Files

Meeting minutes, agendas and action items can be found here

Other shared files can be found here. (If you have a file to post please contact Nick Glass)

The Team

Our team has a rich background in biology, biochemistry and engineering. To compliment our diversity we also have advisors who have a wealth of knowledge in research and applications of genetic engineering. The University of Alberta's iGEM Team Members can be found here.

Our University of Alberta Student Group Constitution can be found here

Edmonton

For more on the city of Edmonton click [http://www.ualberta.ca/~mjl3/About.html here].

External Links

General

[http://www.ualberta.ca University of Alberta Homepage]

Computational Modelling

[http://www.systems-biology.org/cd Cell Designer Homepage]

[www.biomodels.org Biomodels Home Page]