Traditionally the creation of cellulosic ethanol follows one of two routes.  The first route is to first plasmify the organic matter, breaking down the cellulose and creating a gassy mix of small hydrocarbons.  This mix is then fed to special bacteria, which produce the ethanol.  Coskata, one leading manufacturer that promises $1/gallon ethanol, is implementing this strategy.

A second route is to feed the cellulose directly to enzymes that break it down, and then ferment the resulting sugars to turn them into ethanol.  However, this process has traditionally been more expensive than the other approach, as the enzymes cost a lot of money, and typically a significant portion are lost during the cellulose degradation.

New research from the Louisiana Tech University could change that.  LTU researchers have developed a way of immobilizing the enzymes, greatly reducing enzyme loss and its corresponding costs.  Details on the new approach are scant other than that it uses "nanotechnology", but it seems likely that it employs some sort of charged particles to affix the non-catalytic domains of enzymes to reactor walls or a porous network, or else uses extracellular matrix proteins to bind the enzymes.

LTU will reveal more details when Professor James Palmer presents his group's work at Louisiana Tech’s Energy Systems Conference on November 5 at the Technology Transfer Center in Shreveport.

The university estimates that a commercial plant would save approximately $32M USD (they did not specify if this was a yearly total or perhaps over the plant's lifetime) and that under the federally established goal to reach 16 billion gallons of cellulosic ethanol, the net saving could be $7.5B USD, if the goal was reached.  LTU also notes that they estimate cellulosic ethanol to reduce carbon emissions by 89 percent over traditional fuels.

The Louisiana college is cheering that its state is ideally situated to profit from the burgeoning cellulosic ethanol market.  Writes LTU in the press release, "The innovative research taking place at Louisiana Tech, along with an excellent growing season, a strong pulp/paper industry, and one of the nation’s first cellulosic ethanol demonstration plants, has the state of Louisiana well positioned to become a national contributor in cellulosic ethanol."