Professor Zheng Guo from the Department of Biological and Chemical Engineering, is head of the research group Agro-Biotechnology Science, and he has also received DKK 6.2 million from Independent Research Fund Denmark for the project ‘C1-to-Cn Biopath’.
The aim of the project is to develop the yeast S. Cerevisiae to absorb and bind carbon from green biomass, that has absorbed CO2 from the atmosphere. This means the yeast can act as a negative-carbon technology that can be used for energy storage and production of biofuels, for example.
"We’re going to turn the natural metabolism of the yeast upside down and get it to convert CO2 and methane into alkanes, which can then be used as biofuel. The project will develop a proof-of-concept scale setup, but the plan is to be able to scale it up to industrial scale later," says Professor Zheng Guo.
Four of the total of five projects at AU Engineering that have received funding from Independent Research Fund Denmark for original and ground-breaking research are based at the Department of Biological and Chemical Engineering.