Biofuel Innovators:


James Dumesic and former student George Huber- James Dumesic of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and his former student George Huber, now at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, are breaking new ground in the development of an alternative fuel called "green gasoline." They announced they have succesfully made an integration process for creating chemical components of jet fuel using a  green gasoline approach. They made the first direct conversion of plant cellulose into gasoline components. Their current work shows that the production of jet fuel components can be integrated and run sequentially, without complex separation and purification processes between reactors. For the new approach, the UMass researcher rapidly heated cellulose in the presence of solid catalysts, that speed up the reactions without sacrificing them during the process. Then it is rapidly cooled to create a liquid that contains many of the components found in gasoline. The process took less than two minutes. Many see this "green gasoline" as a more attractive alternative to bio ethanol since it can be used in existing engines and doesn't incur the 30% mileage penalty of ethanol fuel. Also, it requires much less energy to produce thus giving it a smaller carbon footprint and cheaper to produce. The cellulosic sources could be from switchgrass and poplar trees or even wood chips and the leftovers from cornfields called corn stover.


 


Here, is a poplar tree farm. Poplar tree are a viable source of fuel because of their high energy in-energy out ratio, large carbon mitigation potential and fast growth.

 


Here is a photo of switchgrass. It's advantages are its stand longevity, drought tolerance, relatively low herbicide and fertilizer input requirements, ease of management, hardiness in poor soil and climate conditions and widespread adaptability in temperate climates. The cost of production is generally half that of grain, corn and other biomass energy sources. 

 

Green Star- Here is a company that is working on making algae fuels viable as a fuel sourcce in the near future. As of May of  2008, they announced the creation of a new micronutrient that can help boost algae daily growth rate by 34% and "increase the total biomass quantity in a harvest algae growth cycle by well over 100%." The research was conducted in Biotech Research's lab facility at the UABC University in Ensenada, Mexico. 


 

Dr. Joy Peterson- As of July 31, 2008, Professor of Microbiology and chair of UGA's Bioenergy Task Force, announced a new technology for breaking down inexpensive waste products including corn stover or bagasse, the waste from corn and sugar harvests, fast-growing weeds and non-food crops grown for biofuels, such as switchgrass, Napiergrass and Bermudagrass. With her discovery, now much of the leftover can be utilized and converted into fuel and at the same time not add to the threat of food shortages.  Basically, the new technology features a fast, mild, acid-free pretreatment process that increases by at least 10 times the amount of simple sugars released from inexpensive biomass for conversion to ethanol. The technology eliminates the use of expensive and environmentally unsafe chemicals currently used to pretreat biomass. 


 


Here is a photo of Dr. Joy Doran Peterson, assistant Professor of Microbiology, University of Georgia. She is also the Director of the Biofuels, Biopower, and Biomaterials Initiative (B3I).

 
 

Iowa State- This school has found that utilizing certain fungi during the dry grind process of ethanol production, does in fact clean up the process and improve it. The process by which ethanol is produced is by the grinding of corn kernels or any other biomass). Then water is added to the grind to break the starches into sugars, which are then fermented with yeast to make the biofuel ethanol. The problem with ethanol is the high amount of energy it takes to convert it into fuel and to safely use the ethanol as fuel, it has to be distilled to separate the usable biofuel from the leftover solids and fluids. The problem with ethanol is that for every gallon of ethanol produced, there are about six gallons of leftover, unusable liquids and solids called stillage. This is where iowa State comes in. They discovered that by adding Rhizopus microsporus, a fungi, to the thin stillage, the fungi removes about 80% of the organic material and all of the solids left, thus allowing the water and enzymes to be recycled back into production where otherwise it would have to be disposed of. Then, the thriving fungi can be mixed in with the left over solids and sold for livestock feed. By reducing the amount of energy needed to create ethanol, the cost of production would be lowered. And, since more money is made from selling the leftover solids and fungi for livestock feed, the cost of production would be further lowered. These two new developments are a step in making ethanol a more viable and practical fuel at the same time getting closer to independency and sustainability.

Van Leeuwen said all of that can save United States ethanol producers a lot of energy and money at current production levels:
  • Eliminating the need to evaporate thin stillage would save ethanol plants up to $800 million a year in energy costs.
  • Allowing more water recycling would reduce the industry's water consumption by as much as 10 billion gallons per year. And it allows producers to recycle enzymes in the thin stillage, saving about $60 million per year.
  • Adding value and nutrients to the livestock feed produced by ethanol plants would grow the market for that feed by about $400 million per year.
  • And the researchers' fungal process would improve the energy balance of ethanol production by reducing energy inputs so there is more of an energy gain.

Pictured above are Iowa State researchers. Left to right, Anthony L. Pometto III, Hans van Leeuwan and Mary Rasmussen. Here, they display the 2008 grand Prize for University research presented by the Amereican Academy of environmental Engineers.Not pictured is Samir Khanal from University of Hawai'i at Manoa.





 

Pictured above on the left is stillage left over from the ethanol production process. After the fungi, Rhizopus microsporus, is added, after about three days, the fungal pellets fill the reactor. The fungus can then be dried and sold as livestock feed supplement. Or it can be blended with distillers dried grains to boost its value as a livestock feed and make it more suitable for feeding hogs and chickens.


 

Bionavitas Inc.- The company based in Redmond, Washington is a bioscience company who unveiled a scientific breakthrough that may dramatically increase algae yields in a cost-efficient and scalable model on Februrary 25,2009. Bionavitas Inc. plans on harnessing the sun's power or an artificial light source by immersing it in the culture, with their patent-pending Light Immersion Technology that effectively promotes the growth of more algae biomass than existing methods.  Thereby increasing yields and in the process reducing the cost to make algae-based biofuels competitive with other fuel products for the consumer. Bionavitas confronts the challenge that as algae grows, the algae become so dense that they block out the light needed for continued growth farther down. This "self-shading" phenomenon results in a layer that limits the amount of algae per acre that can be grown and harvested. The Light Immersion Technology enables the algae growth layer to be a 10 to 12 time increase in yield over previous methods that only produced 3-5 centimeters of growth. The approach of the Light Immersion Technology are light rods that extend deep into the algae culture. By releasing the light in these controlled locations, algae cultures can grow denser. In the external canal systems, the rods distribute light from the sun into the culture. "In order to grow algae in the large-scale, cost effective manner needed for biofuels, we have specifically designed our technology to require as little energy as possible." said Michael Weaver, co-founder and CEO of Bionavitas. "Light Immersion Technology has all of the attributes needed to allow algae to compete with petroleum. It is designed as a passive, low input, net energy positive system which is inexpensive to mass produce."
   

In the photo above, the Light Immersion Technology models how their light rods can be emerged into the algae to stimulate growth deeper down where less light would reach otherwise.



 

The photo in the top right is a type of algae plant that is underwater. The above photo is a magnified picture of green algae. Bionavitas Inc. is currently trying to get a patent on their Light Immersion Technology that has the potential to be used worldwide in future algae farms that want to maximize the algae growth.