Rocket fuel: Bacteria that pack a punch

Rocket fuel: Bacteria that pack a punch

Subject: Science and Technology

Section: Science

Context: Scientists at the US Lawrence-Berkeley Lab have developed a fuel from a bacterium that packs more energy than even the rocket fuels in use today.

How the common streptomyces promises to fuel rockets

• This bacterium is used to make many drugs, including the familiar streptomycin.
• The scientists have named the new fuel ‘POP-FAME’, for polycyclopropanated fatty acid methyl ester.
• in the 1960s, the Soviet Union had developed a petroleum-based rocket fuel called Syntin and used it successfully to launch several Soyuz rockets in the 1970s.
• POP-FAME’s molecular structure closely resembles Syntin’s.
• At the heart of the fuel’s structure is the ‘three-carbon’ ring — a triangle with a carbon atom at each vertex. (Each carbon atom combines with two other carbon atoms and two other elements, mostly hydrogen.) This structure is called a cyclopropane; they hold potential energy in their bonds.

Types of Fuel

• Longer chain fuels would be solids, well-suited to certain rocket fuel applications, shorter chains might be better for jet fuel, and in the middle might be a diesel-alternative molecule.