Tobacco turns green leaf as possible biofuel, home insulation
Tobacco, a crop under siege as the number of smoking bans in the United States continues to increase, may be turning a new leaf as a possible source of home insulation and biofuel.
At Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, researchers at its Biotechnology Foundation Laboratories have figured out how to tweak the genes in tobacco plants to increase their oil production, which could help spur their use as biofuel.
“Tobacco is very attractive as a biofuel because the idea is to use plants that aren’t used in food production,” said study co-author Vyacheslav Andrianov, assistant professor of cancer biology at Jefferson Medical College. He added:
We have found ways to genetically engineer the plants so that their leaves express more oil. In some instances, the modified plants produced 20-fold more oil in the leaves…
Based on these data, tobacco represents an attractive and promising ‘energy plant’ platform, and could also serve as a model for the utilization of other high-biomass plants for biofuel production.
The preliminary research has been published online in Plant Biotechnology Journal.
A giant cigarette butt in London’s Trafalgar Square in April 2008 is meant to highlight the scale of England’s largest litter problem and to launch a campaign to stop smokers from dropping their used cigarettes on the streets.
Tobacco, in the form of cigarette butts, is also being studied as a way to better insulate homes.
The London Evening Standard recently reported that the London borough of Harrow is studying innovative technology to recycle the butts into rolls of home insulation. Currently, the butts, about 4,000 of which are dropped in the town center every day, end up in landfills.
Harrow plans to collect them, sterilize them and break them down into insulation “pillows.” It got the idea from recycling company Igloo Environmental, set up by environmental researcher Shaun Grimes, who said he was inspired by seeing birds line nests with cigarette butts.
“When the cigarette ban came in suddenly we were knee deep in the things,” Grimes told the paper. “Our ultimate task is to rid our streets of ugly, toxic cigarette butts and recycle them into useful loft insulation after the removal of all the toxins.”
the attachments to this post:
tobacco leave
