Domestic Fuel

A team of researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison have figured out how to get the the sugar molecules trapped inside inedible plant biomass, a key step in the creation of cellulosic biofuels.

This press release from the school says the process, featured in the latest issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, converts up to three-quarters of the sugars locked up in raw corn stover into simple, fermentable sugars … an attractive alternative to the enzyme-based approaches currently favored by biofuels researchers:

“Our chemical process is extremely efficient,” says Ron Raines, a UW-Madison professor of biochemistry and chemistry. “It also has marked advantages over the existing processes-both chemical or enzymatic-for producing sugars from biomass.”

Raines’ chemical approach, which he developed with graduate student Joe Binder, a doctoral candidate in the chemistry department, on the other hand, relies on a mixture of an ionic liquid and dilute acid-both of which can slip past lignin-to dissolve the long chains of sugars in biomass and break them up into individual molecules of glucose and xylose.

The article goes on to say that the researchers were able to get about the same amount of sugar out of the biomass as the more-expensive enzymes usually used. This could significantly cut the cost of cellulosic ethanol, helping move that industry forward.

Each day, cellulosic gets closer to becoming commercially viable in the marketplace. Two weeks ago, a major hurdle was overcome with the announcement that Novozymes’ enzyme Cellic® CTec2, used for cellulosic ethanol production with feedstocks such as corn stover and corn cobs, is now 50 cents per gallon. I had the opportunity to learn more about this breakthrough when I sat down with Thomas Videbaek, Executive President of Novozymes BioBusiness, at Commodity Classic.

Videbaek explained that Cellic is the first commercial product for cellulosic ethanol. With Cellic, you’ll be able to produce cellulosic ethanol using an enzyme cost of about 50 cents per gallon. “With this, we think that the enzyme part of producing cellulosic ethanol has been cracked,” said Videbaek. “Now we need to get out and starting producing it and we’re really, really excited about that.”

Novozymes is a partner with POET’s Project Liberty which will produce ethanol from corn cobs. I asked Videbaek for an update and he believes that with the enzyme breakthrough they will be able to produce cellulosic ethanol for around $2.35 per gallon. However, the expectation is that once Project Liberty is up and running, the cost will be reduced to around $1.90 per gallon. This will be monumental in that it will break the $2.00 per gallon barrier challenge of producing cellulosic ethanol.

This was a massive project for Novozymes who has been working on it for more than five years. “It’s the biggest project we’ve ever carried out,” said Videbaek. There were more than 150 people working on it in the past year alone.

In addition to corn stover and cobs as a feedstock, they are also working with wheat in Europe and have an operational pilot plant in Denmark. In addition, they are working with Brazilian ethanol producers to develop an enzyme to break down the bagasse.

You can learn more about Cellic by listening to my full interview with Thomas below.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (2.3MB)

A Colorado-based firm with a planned biorefinery located near Soperton, Georgia is the recipient of a loan guaranteed by USDA Rural Development to make cellulosic biofuel from wood chips, according to a USDA announcement. The finalized deal with Range Fuels was first announced last year and represents the first ever loan guarantee by USDA to a commercial-scale cellulosic biofuel plant. This project is expected to provide biorefinery jobs, construction jobs and support the timber industry.

“USDA’s investment in the construction of Range Fuels’ commercial facility, which will produce cellulosic biofuel from non-food biomass, such as wood chips, demonstrates the Obama Administration’s goal to make the United States a leader in renewable energy production and furthers the President’s ongoing efforts to bring jobs to rural communities,” said Under Secretary for Rural Development Dallas Tonsager. “USDA is proud to work with the lender and the private sector to bring economic opportunity to rural areas.”

The $80 million loan, being made by AgSouth Farm Credit to Range Fuels, Inc., is being guaranteed through USDA’s Biorefinery Assistance Program authorized by the Food, Conservation, and Energy Act of 2008 and administered by USDA Rural Development. When fully operational, the plant is expected to produce an estimated 20 million gallons of cellulosic ethanol per year. USDA announced a conditional commitment to provide the loan guarantee for Range Fuels in January, 2009.

Representatives from the University of Florida, Buckeye Technologies Inc. and the Florida Legislature broke ground for a new pilot plant to produce ethanol from cellulosic biomass.

Funded by a $20 million appropriation from the Florida Legislature, the plant will be built at the Perry, Fla. facility of Buckeye Technologies Inc., a manufacturer and worldwide distributor of cellulose-based specialty products made from wood and cotton. It is scheduled to be operational by spring 2011.

Much of the plant’s research will be based on the work of Lonnie Ingram, UF distinguished professor of microbiology and cell science and director of the Florida Center for Renewable Chemicals and Fuels. Ingram engineered an E. coli bacterium that breaks down inedible plant material into sugars that can be processed into fuel-grade cellulosic ethanol. Variations of the technology are already at work in fuel plants in Louisiana and Japan.

Click on photo, courtesy of IFAS news, for a larger view. Pictured left to right: Lonnie Ingram, UF distinguished professor of microbiology and cell science; Leonard Bembry, Florida House of Representatives District 10; Ralph Poppell, Florida House of Representatives District 29; Debbie Mayfield, Florida House of Representatives District 80; John Crowe, Buckeye Technologies, Inc. chief executive officer; Bernie Machen, University of Florida president; Cynthia O’Connell, University of Florida Board of Trustees; Larry Arrington, University of Florida interim senior vice president for agriculture and natural resources.

Verenium and BP are continuing to work on a month to month basis toward the development and commercialization of cellulosic ethanol.

The two companies today announced another month long extension to the initial 18-month joint development program established in August 2008. The previous extension to the agreement ended today, now it will continue until April 1, 2010 as the parties continue negotiations for a longer-term collaboration. In the meantime, Verenium gets another $2.5 million from BP to co-fund the cellulosic ethanol program for the month of March.

Poplar trees could get more popular if they prove to be the next big ethanol feedstock.

A team of researchers at the University of Maryland, College Park, and Bowie State University is working on ways to use the hybrid trees to make ethanol and other biofuels, since they could be grown on plantations and harvested without affecting existing woodlands. Poplar, which is also known as cottonwood or aspen, is already commonly cultivated for the production of paper and timber.

The study is funded by a $3.2 million, four-year grant from the National Science Foundation’s Plant Genome Research Project, which supports research on plants seen as having economic and agricultural importance. Using the recently completed poplar genome, the researchers are focusing on ways to improve the tree’s nitrogen processing capability, which will enhance its growth rate and feasibility for use in fuel production.

If you did a survey among the biofuels industry and asked if the funding programs for biofuels research and development were working, most would say no. Actually, many outside of the industry would say no. As the country continues forward on the federal goals set out in the Renewable Fuels Standard (RFS) things will need to change if we’re going to achieve them claims Advanced Biofuels USA. The organization recently passed a resolution to introduce new ideas to generate federal funding and investments in the development of sustainable biofuels.

The answer: the Highway Trust fund along with an increase in the transportation fuel user fee.

As part of this resolution, Advanced Biofuels USA provides a summary analysis of the “causes of the failure to surmount technical challenges, to obtain adequate financing, and to assure demand for biofuels consistent with the expectation expressed in the RFS.” It also provides suggestions to reverse these issues. In a nutshell the group states that for a successful future of biofuels, the oversight should belong in the US Department of Transportation (DOT) and removed from the Department of Energy (DOE) and Department of Agriculture (USDA).

The overarching idea is that a dedicated funding source to be used only for advanced biofuel (meeting RFS and beyond) commercial deployment should be established as part of the Transportation Trust Fund. It would be funded by a $.01/gallon user fee (between $850 million and $1billion/year) and a similar fee on electricity used for plug-in vehicles.

Should an idea like this take effect…
Read the rest of this post…

American Process had a ribbon cutting ceremony today celebrating its first cellulosic ethanol production at its pilot plant in Thomaston, GA. The plant was designed to test its proprietary technology, AVAP, American Value Added Pulping. This process co-produces pulp and ethanol from wood in an integrated biorefinery application. The wood is also used to provide energy for the plant.

According to the company’s website, AVAP utilizes alcohol sulfite cooking liquor to fractionate softwood chips into three lignocellulosic components. The addition of alcohol speeds the pulping, but still preserves the cellulose strength. Volatile cooking chemicals are stripped and reused in the cooking process at a high recovery rate, and lignosulfonates are precipitated and burned to produce process energy. The remaining liquid fraction contains hydrolyzed hemicelluloses. The company estimates that this sugar rich solution, when fermented, will annually yield up to 22.6 million gallons of bioethanol from a mill producing 500 tpd of pulp. The company notes that the value of converted hemicelluloses is 4-5 times greater for society as ethanol than as presently burned.

According to Bob Belling, the VP of Business Development, the site will produce about 80k gals/yr of ethanol. At this time, it will not be blended or sold and the pilot plant is being used for research only. The project has also created about 20 jobs in Atlanta and Thomaston.

German-based Butalco has announced that it will begin producing biofuel from agricultural waste this summer using its proprietary new yeast technology. The pilot plant is located in Southern Germany and the company’s new microbial catalysts will enable up to a 30 percent increase in yields during cellulosic ethanol production.

As explained by the company, cellulosic biomass, like plant waste materials, contains different types of sugars like glucose (C6) and pentoses (C5). Traditionally, yeasts are used in bioethanol production as they can efficiently ferment glucose into ethanol, but they are unable to digest the C5 sugars. Companies such as Butalco are looking at enzymes to break the plant biomass into C5/C6 sugar mixtures.

Eckhard Boles, co-founder of Butalco, said in a press statement, “Our new technology now tells the yeast cells to also ferment the C5 waste sugars into ethanol which makes the production of cellulosic ethanol much more efficient and cheaper. Together with the new commercially viable enzymes launched last week by the enzyme companies Danisco and Novozymes, Butalco’s yeast technology will enable cellulosic ethanol as a competitive alternative to gasoline.”

The company will use Hohenheim University’s (Stuttgart, Germany) newly built pilot plant for the production of its first amounts of cellulosic ethanol. Last year, Butalco signed a research and development contract with the Institute of Fermentation Technology within the Department of Food Science and Biotechnology at Hohenheim University. The institute has been concerned with questions on the production of bioethanol for almost 30 years. The plant is able to convert both starch and lignocellulosic based raw materials into ethanol.

At least one ethanol industry representative has been appointed to an expert work group attempting to assess the true carbon footprint of all fuel sources under the California’s proposed Low Carbon Fuel Standard.

POET Senior Vice President of Science and Technology Mark Stowers has been appointed to the California Air Resources Board (CARB) is one of 30 experts from around the world appointed to the group. The group has been charged with assisting the Board in “refining and improving the land use and indirect effect analysis of transportation fuels,” according to a CARB resolution. The group will come up with recommendations to present to CARB by Jan. 1, 2011. The group’s first meeting will be Feb. 26 in Sacramento.

“The Low Carbon Fuel Standard is an important piece of energy policy, too important to rely on theories or unproven models,” Stowers said. “As the lone representative for ethanol producers in the workgroup, I want to make sure than all carbon accounting is based on the wealth of facts and accumulated data regarding agriculture, energy and deforestation. I also want to ensure that all fuels, including oil and electricity, are held to the same accounting standards as biofuels so that the rule truly can lower carbon emissions.”

The group also includes Jesper Hedal Kløverpris of Novozymes, which produces enzymes to further the development of advanced biofuels, as well as a number of university and energy researchers – but Stowers is the only ethanol industry representative on the panel. Stowers has led efforts at POET to create new, efficient processes for producing grain-based ethanol that save energy, limit water use and improve ethanol yields. He also leads POET’s cellulosic ethanol effort, known as Project LIBERTY, which produces ethanol from corn cobs.