| Eco friendly products are being developed by | | | | treatment procedures, as well as along with Alan |
| researchers in universities throughout the globe. Scott | | | | West, professor of chemical engineering. The group |
| Banta, a chemical engineering professor at Columbia | | | | aims to make use of genetic engineering to create a |
| University's Fu Foundation School of Engineering and | | | | brand new metabolic pathway regarding a bacterium |
| Applied Science, has won a federal scholarship to get | | | | known as N. europaea, which can be generally used in |
| a microbe that can create the biofuel butanol by | | | | wastewater treatment, with the supreme objective |
| developing on carbon dioxide and ammonia. | | | | of reducing the price of butanol production. The price |
| The carbon dioxide will come from ambient air, | | | | factor is important because right now ethanol has the |
| certainly not fossil fuels, plus the ammonia can come | | | | edge on price, but butanol possesses properties that |
| from wastewater or it may be produced through a | | | | could help make it easier to integrate into the |
| chemical procedure using sustainably created electric | | | | present distribution and transportation system. |
| power. | | | | More Income for Sustainable Power |
| The use of microbes to generate environmentally | | | | Part of President Obama's American Recovery and |
| friendly power is under intense development, both to | | | | Reinvestment Act (ARRA) is dedicated to creating |
| create bio fuels and to produce electrical power in | | | | new green jobs in a variety of career fields including |
| the form of microbial fuel cells, an area that the U.S. | | | | biofuel manufacturing. ARRA is providing $543,000 |
| Navy has caught on to. Banta notes that using an | | | | with regards to Banta's project, included in a $106 |
| ammonia-oxidizing living bacteria makes this particular | | | | million round of funding with the Department of |
| project distinctive. It also involves one of those | | | | Energy's Advanced Research Projects Agency. As |
| sustainability twofers that all of us love: while | | | | well as the Columbia task, 36 additional research |
| assisting the U.S. move away from the growing | | | | projects received financing, including a dozen focused |
| dangers of fossil fuel gathering, it also may also help | | | | on microbial electro-biofuel advancement. That is a |
| get back and recycle wastewater. | | | | drop inside the bucket when compared to existing |
| Supportable Butanol | | | | subsidies for oil, gas, and coal, but hey you need to |
| Professor Banta will do the job with Kartik Chandran, | | | | start somewhere. President Obama has suggested |
| an assistant professor of earth and environmental | | | | stopping those subsidies, and if even part of those |
| engineering who involving other areas has studied | | | | funds are transferred to sustainable power research |
| emissions coming from certain kinds of sewage | | | | possibly the coming years will bring speedier progress. |