Staying in the Lead on Biofuel Development -- Part 2

Ever since the beginning of America's ethanol industry over 30 years ago, scientists, chemical engineers, entrepreneurs and policymakers have sought ways to expand production beyond using corn or other grains as ethanol feedstock. To make ethanol requires breaking down starch into sugar. Converting sugar cane, as they do in Brazil, or corn here in the US, to ethanol requires far fewer steps than converting wood chips, corn cobs, switchgrass or other cellulosic substances. The key issue in converting cellulose is finding the right enzymes or bacteria to extract the sugar from cellulose.

Now, breakthroughs by scientists in their laboratories are enabling ethanol refiners to invest in new facilities, some of which are also using federal loans or grants, to demonstrate the commercial feasibility of cellulosic ethanol.

The advantages of moving to the next generation of biofuels are many. Producing ethanol from cellulose can cut carbon dioxide emissions by 86% compared to gasoline according to the US Department of Energy. Because of the many potential cellulosic feedstocks, ethanol can be produced in almost every part of the country.

For example, Verenium, a Boston-based biotech company, is converting bagasse, a byproduct of sugar production, into ethanol at a plant in Jennings, Louisiana. Just recently, the company announced the construction of commercial scale facility in Florida that will convert renewable grasses to 36 million gallons of fuel a year.

Range Fuels, based in Colorado, is using a thermo-chemical process for a 120 million gallon a year facility in Soperton, GA to produce ethanol from wood and wood waste from Georgia's pine forests and sawmills.

In Pennsylvania, Coskata Inc., a leading developer of next-generation biofuels, is building a commercial demonstration plant which will convert a variety of feedstocks, including woody biomass as well as agricultural and industrial wastes into ethanol using a gasification process.

Although credit is still tight and some projects will take longer to be completed, the ethanol industry and the US government, along with several state governments, are moving forward on developing a large-scale cellulosic ethanol industry. According to a recent USA Today story, venture capital firms "have poured $682 million into cellulosic start-ups since 2006," while the Department of Energy has "provided nearly $850 million for research and development."

With strong support from the incoming Obama administration and the nation's new Nobel Prize winning Energy Secretary, Steven Chu, we will continue to see rapid development of cellulosic ethanol, just in time to meet the growing production requirements so necessary to reduce our reliance on imported oil.

Comments

[alvdh1]

I recently flew over the Southern half of Missouri. I was amazed at the rampant deforestation that has occured in our great state. Mr. Obama, you need to put legions of people to work replanting our forests. Ethanol is a joke because it maintains the status quo of the internal combustion engine that still wastes 95% of the thermal energy to, in many cases, transport one person- electric drive systems people.

[GLS350]

Full Disclosure: I work as a scientist for one of the biotech companies mentioned in the article.

While I agree with the thrust of your comment, you miss the main difference between fossil fuels and ethanol. Ethanol is a conversion of existing material already present on the surface of the planet. It does not end up being a net release of additional green house gas on its own in that it obeys the laws of thermodynamics and does not create material that was not already there. The use of fossil fuels on the other hand results in release of greenhouse gases that were otherwise sequestered in the the ground, removed from the environment and the natural cycle of gas emission and absorption.

Furthermore, this next generation of ethanol shifts the burden from the food supply to the wastes already generated alongside food production which were generally just burned off anyway (ie-switch grass, sorghum, bagasse, corn husk, etc.)

Granted, the power we use to research and create the ethanol right now comes from the use of fossil fuel, resulting in a negative carbon balance. If and when we figure out how to produce massive amounts of energy from renewable resources the carbon balance will shift closer to neutral.

And on the point you make about electric drive systems, where do you think the energy to power those systems comes from? Currently it's fossil fuel and coal.

[research]

Thanks for your disclosure.

As long as Ethanol is only using "waste" organics, that's good.

How does it compare to Bio Charcoal?

[BrianJDonovan]

Louisiana Enacts the Most Comprehensive Advanced Biofuel Legislation in the Nation

Governor Bobby Jindal has signed into law the Advanced Biofuel Industry Development Initiative, the most comprehensive and far-reaching state legislation in the nation enacted to develop a statewide advanced biofuel industry. Louisiana is the first state to enact alternative transportation fuel legislation that includes a variable blending pump pilot program and a hydrous ethanol pilot program.

Field-to-Pump
The legislature found that the proper development of an advanced biofuel industry in Louisiana requires implementation of the following comprehensive “field-to-pump” strategy developed by Renergie, Inc.:

(1) Feedstock other than corn;
(2) Decentralized network of small advanced biofuel manufacturing facilities;
(3) Variable blending pumps in lieu of splash blending; and
(4) Hydrous ethanol.

Renergie looks forward to working closely with the Obama-Biden administration to:
(a) reduce U.S. dependency on imported oil;
(b) repeal the ethanol import tariff;
(c) maximize the environmental benefits of ethanol-blended transportation fuels; and
(d) create jobs in rural areas of the United States by growing ethanol demand, specifically hydrous ethanol demand, beyond the 10% blend market.

Please feel free to visit Renergie’s weblog (www.renergie.wordpress.com) for more information.

[rocketman69]

Doesn't fermentation cause the release of CO2?

[GoldEnergy]

The CO2 that is released is then used by the next crop (trees, corn plants, sugar cane, whatever). The yeast takes the carbohydrate (carbon, oxygen & water) and feeds off of it - excreting alcohol while breating out the CO2 which will then be used by the feedstock during its next growing cycle - the wonderful process of photosynthesis.
This differs greatly from the CO2 released by burning gasoline or other petroleum products - all of which comes from plants that died millions of years ago and therfore add CO2 to the atmosphere with no CO2 "sink" or absorption in the cylcle.

[research]

I wonder how it compares with Bio Char?