The internetchemistry website reports some highlights of a scientific article entitled, "Biofuel combustion chemistry: from ethanol to biodiesel", which appears in the 2010 May issue of the journal, Angewandte Chemie (URL above). The paper analyzes the "combustion chemistry of compounds that constitute typical biofuels, including alcohols, ethers and esters". The research, conducted by an international team of scientists, offers detailed insights into how biofuel chemicals react when burned. Although much of biofuels research dwell on the production aspects, fuel delivery structure, engine performance and policy related issues (i.e. food-versus-fuel debate or life-cycle analysis), the combustion chemistry of the compounds that constitute typical biofuels, including alcohols, ethers, and esters, has not received similar public attention.

The review paper "highlights some characteristic aspects of the chemical pathways in the combustion of prototypical representatives of potential biofuels." Discussion focuses on "the decomposition and oxidation mechanisms and the formation of undesired, harmful, or toxic emissions, with an emphasis on transportation fuels." New insights into the highly diverse and complex chemical reaction networks of biofuel combustion were also made possible by novel scientific tools. According to the abstract of the article, "Understanding key elements of this chemistry is an important step towards intelligent selection of next-generation alternative fuels."

Researchers at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory's Bioenergy Research Center (United States) announced that they have identified a Zymomonas mobilis gene which could hold a key for more effective microbial utilization of pretreated lignocellulosic biomass for biofuel-ethanol production. Before lignocellulosic biomass (such as corn stover or switchgrass) can be processed for ethanol fermentation, it undergoes pretreatment "to loosen the cellular structure enough to extract the sugar from cellulose." According to co-researcher, Steven Brown, these treatments add new challenges because, although they are necessary, they create a range of chemicals known as inhibitors that stall or stop (ethanol-fermenting) microorganisms like Zymomonas mobilis from performing the fermentation. Acetic acid (or acetate) is one such inhibitor.

By using the tools of systems biology, the scientists were able to characterize a mutant of Zymomonas mobilis (AcR) and demonstrated that acetate tolerance has potential importance in biofuel development. The researchers developed a strain of Z. mobilis which becomes acetate-tolerant when the key gene is over-expressed; they also found that the mutant gene created a similar impact when it was inserted into yeast. The full paper is published as an open access article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) (URL above).