The International Research Group suggests to use the bacterium Zymomonas mobilis for this purpose. This bacterium produces ethanol and can propagate itself in gaseous nitrogen.
This microorganism convert the inedible parts of plants into ethanol threefold and fivefold as faster than bakery yeast and can convert atmospheric nitrogen into ammonium. According to the recent research results, elemental nitrogen will be able to substitute in a while environmentally unfriendly and expensive to produce ammonium, which is used in bioreactors processing vegetable cellulose into bioethanol.
Uldis Kalnenieks, the representative of the University of Latvia announced that the fact that the bacterium Zymomonas mobilis contains the necessary genomes has been already known a long time ago though nobody checked its ability to absorb nitrogen in practice. Yeast bacteria, which also produce ethanol do not have such properties so when there appears the microorganism with this capacity, undoubtedly, it has an obvious advantage over others.
James McKinley from the University of Indiana sought to achieve so that the bacterium Rhodopseudomonas palustris absorbs nitrogen. To his surprise, the testing culture Zymomonas mobilis showed the same growth as Rhodopseudomonas palustris. In the process of the further researches Mr. McKinley has been cultivating Zymomonas mobilis on the basis of the marked nitrogen and has discovered that the bacterium has absorbed the markers by its proteins.
Unfortunately, Zymomonas is inefficient in terms of producing energy, forming only one energy ATP molecule from one molecule of glucose compared to yeast capable of forming two ATP molecules.
Notwithstanding the fact that nitrogen fixation and the production of ethanol are intensive energy consuming processes, the additional task of transforming nitrogen into the form capable of being incorporated into biomolecules does not reduce the amount of ethanol produced by the bacteria from silver grass."It is evident that we expect the negative side-effects, but for the present we cannot predict when and at which stage they appear. Presently we observe an insignificant decline in the production", explained sir McKenley.
These studies are carried out by such scientific centres as the U.S National Energy Laboratory, Colorado, the University of Athens, the University of Pennsylvania and many others. All they expect that the use of the bacterium Zymomonas mobilis will provide the economic efficiency of the biofuel production.
