I find it promising. I've done fairly extensive research in this area, and I'll agree, the most current methods are a greener technology than oil processing, but expensive. However, conventional means utilize yeast, which ferment anaerobically, and ferment best preprocessed simple sugars. E. coli is an extremely robust bacteria that can both digest food aerobically and anaerobically. This means that E. coli cutting off of oxygen or overexposure of oxygen won't choke the colony. E. coli also replicates at rates subsantially higher than yeast. E. coli can also survive harsh conditions. After all, it lives in our stomach acid... (1M Hydrochloric). It's reasonable to believe that it can survive in higher ethanol concentrations than yeast. The real cost eater is distillation of product, separating the ethanol from water. If the E. coli can survive in greater ethanol concentrations than yeast, then it has already acheived half the battle, and reduced the energy consumption for distillation. E. coli has been engineered to do amazing things. We will see a lot more of this stuff come out.
I would worry less about the feasibility of acheiving these claims and worry a little more about, what if it gets loose. We could see full crops fermenting in the field. Aquatic plants completely consumed. Everyone here of Calerpa? It's a one-celled plantlike organism, and it covers miles of ocean floor in an around the UK. It was a grand genetic engineering acheivement. Fish tank algae that you don't need to maintain and will still grow. How pretty. Only, someone dumped some down the storm drain. And that's the rest of the story.
ChemE, M.E. EIT
"The only constant in life is change." -Bruce Lee
