Of ethanol and scientists’ options: A page from Prometheus Bound

By J.M. Bo
Published Mar 2006 in The UPLB Horizon

As the country reeled from the multiple increases slapped on gas and oil products after world oil prices surged to record-high levels, everyone went into action mode: law makers rushed legislation, government agencies created ad hoc bodies to address the issue, offices issued energy savings advisories, and homemakers pinched on their budget.

In the University, about two years earlier, the Environmental Biotechnology Program (EBP) of the National Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology (BIOTECH) had reinvigorated its activities under the former Biofuels Program which had lain dormant after the energy crisis in the 1980’s. BIOTECH had at the time isolated HBY3, an indigenous and high-alcohol producing yeast.

But as BIOTECH scientist and EBP Leader Fidel Rey Nayve said, BIOTECH was only able to go as far as testing HBY3 at the industry level when petroleum prices plunged and biofuels research became a victim of fad-based research funding. So the world heaved a sigh of relief when petroleum prices fell and BIOTECH had no choice but to shelve biofuels research as funding dried up. One country (Brazil), however, refused to forget the lessons of the oil crisis, proceeded with dogged determination, and is now the world’s foremost producer and exporter of ethanol.
Meanwhile, BIOTECH’s HBY3 was not left entirely in a dusty corner. Under unknown circumstances, it was pirated and used by the distillery industry to produce ethanol for alcoholic beverages. As Dr. Nayve sadly related, BIOTECH did not get anything from HBY3. “We had no intention of keeping the yeast strain or any technology for that matter to ourselves. What we just wanted is for BIOTECH to get financial returns (royalties) from them,” he said. To emphasize his point, he intimated that this year, BIOTECH’s core budget is only P100,000 per program, that when divided among five projects of the EBP, will leave only a measly P20,000 for each! This amount may not even be enough to cover the cost of media, i.e., yeast-extract, peptone, or bacto-agar!

According to Dr. Nayve, what is happening in BIOTECH is an offshoot of the low level of support that our government allocates to research and development. He said that industrialized countries allocate up to 3% of their GNP to scientific R&D while the Philippines allocated a pathetic 0.14% of its GNP during the same period (2000-2002). Dr. Nayve said that what supports BIOTECH are the external projects and its income generating services. The royalties from HBY3 would have contributed much towards enabling its researchers to continue with their research work.

And continue with the research work on bioethanol is what Dr. Nayve’s team at EBP will do. There are a lot of things going for the research team including the renewed interest in fossil fuel alternatives that are not import dependent, are sources of clean energy, and could generate rural employment to boot. Moreover, the country is endowed with renewable sources of bioethanol such as sugarcane and sugar refinery waste, sweet sorghum, cassava, lignocellulosic materials such as corn stover, grasses, and leaves. The list can go on.

Probably the most important component in bioethanol research are the human resources, the committed researchers who despite the lure of better-paying jobs, are staying on in the University for love of country. Dr. Nayve is only one himself in the BIOTECH team, although how long he and the rest will hold out considering the frustrating work conditions and lack of opportunities in the country , we can only guess and await with bated breath.

The BIOTECH team recently achieved a milestone in their research in bioethanol through the findings of a BS Chemical Engineering graduate, Normand Secreto, who worked on his thesis under Dr. Nayve and Dr. Catalino Alfafara’s tutelage and with the help of fellow researcher Irene Gabrido. Normand was able to identify a yeast that worked better than HBY3. If HBY3 was able to get an 8-9% volume per volume (v/v) concentration of ethanol from molasses in the bioreactor experiment, this yeast initially attained an 11% v/v concentration in the flask experiment, and later a 12% v/v concentration in the bioreactor experiment.

What is more remarkable about Normand’s research was that he was able to attain these levels of ethanol concentration not from a conventional medium but from a molasses medium containing 40% distillery slops. What is the significance of this in distillery waste management? This means that distillery slops can actually be recycled to produce ethanol!

Although slops are not toxic, the volume that is generated by distilleries, estimated at 10-15 liters for every liter of ethanol produced, is enough to clog up rivers, kill our fishery and even the tourism industry, as well as obliterate our coastal resources. The slops deprive the bodies of water with oxygen that every living thing they host needs in order to survive. As Normand and Dr. Nayve’s team worked on increasing ethanol concentration, they anticipated that the volume of distillery slops will increase and aggravate the distillery waste management problem. So why not make the problem a part of the solution? And make it they did!

With Dr. Nayve’s team, Normand was poised to expand the tests on the high ethanol yielding yeast at the industry level when a freak accident snuffed out his young and promising life (see related story on this page). Dr. Nayve says that Normand was such a loss to the team, being the very dedicated and focused researcher that he was.

Although short, Normand’s life clearly had a purpose and his demise may just be equally meaningful. It could fast track the industry-research linkage that Dr. Nayve’s team was planning to enter into to further confirm their findings on the promising yeast strain. For starters, it brought the attention of a distiller, who, after reading Normand’s story that was published in a newspaper, expressed interest in funding further research on the promising yeast strain’s potential to produce ethanol. Dr. Nayve, however, is approaching linkages with caution because he does not want to lose this yeast strain to piracy. He expressed his anxiety about having to take care of intellectual property issues and wished that this will be taken care of by more knowledgeable people or units.

Fad-based if not low support for R&D, inadequacy in addressing intellectual property issues... these are just two long-festering issues that have made it harder for our scientists to practice in the country. The few ones who opted to stay may just bail out from frustration that their work would ever create the impact that they desire to see. Will our generation ever live to see our scientists and researchers contentedly practicing their craft in the country, not forever looking at other options where the grass is greener?