New research out of the University of York in Britain is unraveling some mysteries of the common wood-eating gribble that could provide the key to cheaply turning abundant wood and straw fiber into biofuel.
Anyone who has ever had to wait in line at most DMVs can attest that the government isn’t always exactly… efficient. It is full of red tape and bureaucracy and filling out form after form after form after form. Ever wonder where all of those forms go? Probably not files, not in today’s computerized world. No, they probably end up in the circular file.
Imagine if all of that paper waste could be turned into fuel? Well two vehicles, a Chevy HHR and a Ford F-150, have been converted by a company called Novozymes to use recycled waste-paper as fuel.
As it stands right now, there are comparatively few places to purchase alternative fuels. As of 2005, there were approximately 168,987 gas stations in the United States; of those, just 2,200 sell E85 ethanol fuel.
No major oil outlets have fully embraced biofuels, although British Petroleum has just announced that it may begin commercial production of ethanol starting in 2010.
BP has partnered with Verenium to bring a commercial-scale cellulosic ethanol facility online next year to start bringing alternative fuels to a gas pump near you.
BP has big plans for biofuels and seems to be marching towards an alternative fuel future faster than many of its competitors. Verenium already has a demonstration plant in Louisiana capable of producing over a million gallons of cellulosic ethanol annually, and BP hopes to ramp production up. The Verenium process uses proprietary enzymes to break down grass feedstock and convert it to ethanol more efficiently.
On the heels of the opening of Coskata’s first flex ethanol facility capable of making ethanol from virtually any organic material, GM and Coskata have released a video (below) detailing the Coskata process. Unlike most promotional/informational videos that get dumped on the public, this one is actually rather informative.
Pennsylvania is beautiful this time of year, but I missed most of it since I made the 400+ mile drive mostly in the dark. It took eight hours of dodging speeding semi-trucks and going through many miles of tunnels, but I finally made it to the Westinghouse Plasma Center in Madison, PA. In case you’re asking, yes, the same Westinghouse that makes flat screen televisions (among other nifty tech stuff).
The Coskata semi-commercial flexible ethanol plant, dubbed “Lighthouse”, is located here. This facility is essentially a working scale model of a full size ethanol plant, and the processes and technology here can one day soon be scaled up to produce as much as a 100 million gallons of flex ethanol annually. The important word here is flexible, because unlike other ethanol products, the Coskata process can use just about any carbon matter to produce ethanol. This means the very garbage filling our dumps may one day instead fill our cars.
Today, Coskata Inc. unveiled their semi-commercial flex ethanol factory in Madison, PA. This factory will serve as the first commercially viable flex ethanol factory, which produces ethanol from a variety of feedstocks other than just grain—which is an important step to satisfy food vs. fuel issues and start moving past ethanol from corn.
According to Coskata, their process uses less than half the water needed to make a gallon of gas, while producing seven times the energy of the fossil fuel used in the process.
ZeaChem — a company launched in 1998 by “two guys in a pickup” and ranked by Biofuels Digest as the 11th hottest company in bioenergy last year — claims that their process for making advanced, next-generation ethanol from fast growing woody crops such as poplars will result in a yield of 2,000 gallons of ethanol per acre.
In case you’re wondering if that number is good, compare it to the current yield obtained by the best managed corn ethanol plants of about 450 gallons per acre. A 2,000 gallon per acre yield is on par with the amount of fuel algae outfits claim they can produce with technology that doesn’t really yet exist. ZeaChem’s process already functions using available technology.
US Department of Energy secretary Steven Chu and US Department of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack have announced that the two agencies will be providing $6.3 million dollars for 7 projects at research institutions throughout the US to improve the use of plant feedstocks in biofuel production.
Although biofuels have fallen out of favor in the public eye recently, the federal government — led by Secretary Chu — is still forging ahead with providing money to research next generation biofuels.
“Part of the solution to the energy problem will be home-grown energy crops,” said secretary Chu in a statement. “These projects will help us unlock the true potential of advanced biofuels, decrease our dependence on foreign oil, and create new jobs and a thriving biofuels industry in America.”
“Recent analyses of the energy and greenhouse-gas performance of alternative biofuels have ignited a controversy that may be best resolved by applying two simple principles,” begins the summary from a new joint research paper entitled, “Beneficial Biofuels – The Food, Energy and Environment Trilemma“. The paper was published in the July 17, 2009 issue of Science.
“In a world seeking solutions to its energy, environmental, and food challenges, society cannot afford to miss out on the global greenhouse-gas emission reductions and the local environmental and societal benefits when biofuels are done right. However, society also cannot accept the undesirable impacts of biofuels done wrong.” Read the rest of this entry »
For big fans of renewable energy like me, these are just halyon days, indeed. Hardly have I finished reading that wind is to get a huge jolt from the new DOE, but today, even more huge funding is announced for biofuels development.
It’s almost enough to make you think that maybe we are not too stupid to survive, after all! Yay, us!
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) today announced $85 million from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to develop algae-based biofuels and advanced (yet infrastructure-compatible) biofuels.
DOE press release for the details:
Read the rest of this entry »
Earlier this year we caught up with Alan Novak, Director of Alternative Fuels for Emerson Process Management, to discuss last December’s BioEnergy Summit.
In that post we touched on how, depending on your perspective, biofuel and bioenergy production represent either unmitigated hype and controversy on the one hand, or the potential promise and hope for a sustainable clean energy future based, in part, on an abundant renewable fuel source on the other. Read the rest of this entry »
Today at Noon, a Shell service station in Ottawa, Ontario will quietly begin selling cellulosic ethanol blended into regular gasoline. The biofuel is made locally from wheat straw, and as far as we know is the first time cellulosic ethanol has been made publicly available.
The new fuel will only be available for one month, starting on June 10th, but it’s a major step forward for the production of advanced biofuels. All gasoline purchased at the Ottawa station will be a blend of 10% cellulosic ethanol and 90% gasoline (CE10). Read the rest of this entry »
This week Sao Paulo, Brazil is hosting one of the world’s largest gatherings of the international biofuels industry. The Ethanol Summit 2009 was kicked off in part by President Bill Clinton who noted that Brazil is known for producing the most energy efficient and cost competitive ethanol in the world using sugarcane. The downside, though, says Clinton, is that the country’s increase in ethanol production is a precursor to the continued destruction of the rainforests.
The issue of rainforest destruction (which many experts say is NOT a primary result of increased biofuels production) segues in to the debate of “good biofuels versus bad biofuels”. A bad biofuel may be one that uses food crops, excessive land and too much water. A better biofuel uses biomass, or waste, little water and little to no land. Read the rest of this entry »
They know how to make fuel from fast growing trees with root systems that extend 25 feet into the ground, sequestering carbon emissions and enriching the soil. They even know how to make fuel from algae. They do all this in their labs every day. The problem is making cellulosic and algal fuel in large quantities at costs that compete with fuels from petroleum such as gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel.
This is my second article (previous article) from the 31st Symposium on Biotechnology for Fuels and Chemicals sponsored by NREL (also see the liveblogging from the event). 800 global bioscientists gathered in San Francisco to share their research and showcase their progress. Read the rest of this entry »
Mascoma Corp., a well-known firm pursuing the advanced production of cellulosic ethanol, announced today what they’re calling “major scientific advances” that will enable them to produce lower cost, lower carbon fuel from sustainable sources.
This is a true breakthrough that takes us much, much closer to billions of gallons of low cost cellulosic biofuels. Many had thought that CBP was years or even decades away, but the future just arrived. Mascoma has permanently changed the biofuels landscape from here on.
-Dr. Bruce Dale, Scientific Advistory Board of Mascoma
Mascoma’s value-proposition is to elminate as many steps as possible in the processing of non-food cellulosic feedstocks to produce ethanol. The consolidation of the process—which involves enzymatically breaking apart cellulose into sugars, and then fermenting the sugars into alcohol—dramatically reduces overall cost. CBP eliminates the need for added and costly enzymes to process pretreated lignocellulose into ethanol. Read the rest of this entry »
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