Fuels drive the very fundamentals of livelihood, industry, and economy. While the hegemony of petroleum started its reign, it did not take much time for people to realize that we needed an alternative, because relying on a single source of fuel indicates that we are unable to use that fuel if a problem occurs. This situation persists even today, as petroleum has, for the last century, found to possess various problems from the unreliability of its sources, possibility of depletion, monopolization of supply, and environmental risks. Meanwhile, the true alternative that can compete against the petroleum is yet to be found, all posing certain drawbacks that hinders one from being widely utilized.
The closest competitor yet to be found undoubtedly seems to be ethanol, mostly derived from fermentation, or breakdown of carbohydrates in plant biomasses. Since its discovery in 1826, ethanol has been perceived with a notion of “renewability” in a sense that plants that were regrown unlike petroleum has fascinated many futurists, giving it the reputation of eco-friendliness. Ethanol was first studied and experimented in 1826. Despite its disastrous potential belied by the friendly notion of “renewability,” ethanol fuel has been acclaimed as the next hope of fuel industry.
Transferring into the 20th century, the world faced exponential increase in population and economic activity, followed by intensified pollution. As a consequence, people began to avert the usage of fossil fuels, paying more attention to the renewable energy sources. This phenomenon led to the worldwide usage of ethanol fuel, which was eventually established as the most-used biofuel in the world.
Ethanol fuel has some advantages that fossil fuel does not. First, ethanol fuel is more environmentally friendly. For instance, ethanol releases less carbon dioxide and does not release toxic carbon monoxide. Also, because ethanol fuel is made from plants such as corn, the carbon dioxide released in the process of combustion is balanced out with the carbon dioxide that is absorbed by the plants themselves. Corn-based ethanol is known to reduce greenhouse gas emissions up to 52% more than d gasoline (based on the emissions from both production and use).
As the petroleum fuel price is increasing, the government largely supports the rapid growing market of biofuel. Moreover, as the ethanol/gasoline blending allowance percentage increased to 15 percent from 10 percent, the corn ethanol production rose with tax incentives and tariff protection. This led to a massive demand of corn. Although farmers increased their production to follow up the demand, the effort was not enough and ethanol now consumes 40 percent of US corn crop which means that 15 percent of global corn production is being used up for ethanol fuel in the US(based on 2012 information).
In 2008 there was a price spike and the world’s least developed countries imported $26.6bn in agricultural goods and exported only $9.1bn. This leaves them food supply shortage and leaves poor people exposed to high food price that rises with the demand for ethanol. Uganda is a typical case of a country that has been impacted from corn ethanol. As the international corn prices spiked up, the corn price in Uganda also skyrocketed. Since Ugandans spend 65 percent of their income for food, and 20 percent of their daily consumed calories are from corn, the skyrocketing corn price deepened the poverty and lack of food supply became worse. 50 percent of Ugandans were 'food insecure' in 2007, and the situation would have been worse after 2008. The fact that the increase in ethanol demand in US is responsible for 21 percent of the rise in corn price demonstrates that ethanol fuel clearly seems to be the reason behind the problem.
Corn is said to be the most problematic source of biofuels because it is grown for food in many countries and corn cost directly links to the cost of other food supplies such as meat and eggs in developing countries. The impact is getting larger because more food and land is being dedicated into producing ethanol fuel. With ethanol fuel consumption increasing, the gap between advanced countries and developing countries will never be narrowed down.
Everything is brought on because 'corn' is something we eat. It serves as a food supply for so much of the world's population. SInce the problems are so tremendous, it is evident that scientists have been trying to produce ethanol from inedible parts of corn. Scientists created a method of using enzymes extracted by the cow's stomach, and in 2009 some other scientists bioengineered fungi to break the cellulose down into sugar. Yet these trials were too expensive because they needed enzymes to be directly produced, which was costly.
To solve all these problems, our team, Hafs-Korea, has designed an ideal alternative system for the modern-day 'Corns of Wrath' (parodied from the classic-'Grapes of Wrath'). We also applied the idea of using inedible cellulose. What is fundamentally distinct of our project is that we transform cellulose into glucose without extracting enzymes. Instead, we divided the ethanol manufacturing process into two efficient steps that make the best use of our bioengineered E.coli. With the most fitting power plant we have designed, we would be able to supply the demands of the ethanol fueling world without touching the food supplies of the third world developing countries.
