The University of Toledo is one of six universities in the country to share $4.4 million from the U.S. Department of Energy.
The money supports research on cost-effective, environmentally friendly ways to convert leaves, grass, and other biomass into fuel.
UT expects to get about $450,000 to perfect its research.
A common way to produce ethanol is by breaking cornstarch down into glucose and then ferment that into alcohol with yeast.
The goal is to get away from using food products in the process, said Sasidhar Varanasi, professor of chemical and environmental engineering at UT.
Yeast works in the cornstarch process because there is only one thing to convert, the glucose. But biomass has both glucose and xylose that need to be turned into alcohol, Mr. Varanasi explained.So it's necessary to use either a genetically modified yeast, which can cause its own problems, or something else, he said.
UT's research involves using a modification of the enzyme used to convert glucose into fructose to make high fructose corn syrup.
That enzyme converts the xylose in the biomass into something that can be fermented into alcohol with yeast, called xylulose.
Mr. Varanasi said they have successfully shown this can be done in a laboratory scale and they are now working to increase the production.
"This money will help perfect the technology to make it commercially viable," he said.
In addition to the funding from the federal energy department, UT already has received $250,000 from the Ohio Third Frontier Commission for the research.
UT's research has an interested industry partner, SuGanit Systems, which has a research office in a business incubator at UT.
"There is a lot of excitement about this technology, if you look at biomass energy," said Frank Calzonetti, vice president of research development for UT.
The university has received a lot of attention for its work in solar energy, which they have been doing for many years, Mr. Calzonetti said, but what's interesting about this is that the research really just began about four years ago.
"This is tremendous progress in a short period of time," he said.
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