Green Options

An update from Emerson Process Management’s Alan Novak on progress made at bringing second generation biofuels into commercial production.

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).

Mascoma Corp. says it has found a way to remove several steps from the process of making cellulosic ethanol, cutting the cost and time it takes to make the fuel, while increasing yields.

The Lebanon, N.H.-based company says it has made advances in consolidated bioprocessing, a process that uses engineered microorganism to make ethanol from cellulosic biomass, such as grasses, stalks and wood waste. Mascoma’s CBP process eliminates the need to produce costly cellulase enzymes, by producing the cellulase and ethanol in a single step.

Scientists know how to make fuel from prairie grasses growing on marginal land. 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. 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.

Vehicles fueled by biomass-fired electricity would travel 81% farther on a given crop and produce fewer greenhouse gas emissions than vehicles powered by ethanol, a new study finds.

In a new study published online yesterday in the journal Science, researchers led by Elliott Campbell of the University of California, Merced modeled entire fuel systems all the way from crop cultivation to vehicle propulsion, comparing cumulative greenhouse-gas emissions for both biofuels and bioelectricity. They found that the bioelectric pathway came out ahead of both corn ethanol and advanced cellulosic ethanol made from switchgrass.

Mascoma says they’ve achieved a 60% reduction in cost for their consolidated bioprocessing technology (CBP).

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.

The 31st Symposium on Biotechnology for Fuels and Chemicals

One of the world’s most prestigious and established biofuels meetings, the 31st Symposium on Biotechnology for Fuels and Chemicals, is currently underway May 3-6 in San Francisco, with more than 800 scientists expected to attend sessions on topics ranging from commercialization of biofuels and their long-term sustainability to emerging technologies and turning algae into fuel.

We’re liveblogging (on Twitter) [...]

Jay Keasling of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of California visited Stephen Colbert last night, explaining that the same yeast that we use to produce beer and bread will soon be fueling our cars and planes.

We must transition from fuel from food and haste to fuels from wood and waste. Although the economics do not yet favor major production, pilot plants are taking wood and paper waste and converting it to fuel. Other cellulosic material is even more promising. Some grasses , energy crops, and hybrid poplar trees promise zero-emission fuel sources. These plants absorb CO2 and sequester it in the soil with their deep root systems.

The increased investments must reach the start up companies producing second and third generation biofuels. While investing billions in the sector it must be ensured that the food crops are not diverted to meet the extra 5 percent demand.

Courtesy of Reuters, here is a list of cellulosic ethanol plants currently operating or under construction in the US. We’ve been following a number of these companies over the last year, and I’ve linked each company name to either something we’ve written about them or their company website.

For more background on cellulosic ethanol, see: Dedicated Energy Crops Could Replace 30% of Gasoline.