With growing concerns over climate change and the need to reduce the world’s dependency on fossil fuels, biotechnology companies have been focused on the development of a new alternative energy source: renewable hydrocarbons, be it gasoline, diesel or jet fuel. According to an article recently published by Environment & Energy Daily, more and more companies are convinced that developing a biofuel adaptable to the existing energy infrastructure is the way to go.
“The holy grail is a renewable fuel that no one can tell is renewable. Its price would be similar to that of a barrel of oil. It would be dropped into existing pipelines, refineries and vehicle engines that already process millions of barrels of petroleum a day,” according to E&E. “This is a must-do type of situation. Ethanol has been very important in establishing a very large market, but it can only go so far,” Andy Aden, a senior research engineer at the Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) is quoted in the article.
The emerging technology is based on the same principle as the production of ethanol: Turning sugars into fuel. While companies differ on the specific technology they will use, they are convinced that sugarcane is the preferred feedstock, given its environmental advantages. Sugarcane ethanol reduces greenhouse gases today by about 80% compared to petroleum-based gasoline. A renewable gasoline from sugarcane would likely have the same, or even better, carbon reduction performance.
Virent Energy Systems Inc. has been investing in biogasoline for seven years. “The company uses a chemical catalyst in a refining process that is conceptually similar to how fuel refiners operate today,” says E&E. Virent’s goal is to produce fuels competitive with crude oil at $60 a barrel. Aiming to produce 100 million gallons per year by 2015, Virent is focusing on improving their yields when converting sugar to gasoline and to ensure a low-cost feedstock. For that reason, Virent will have an early focus on energy crops like sugarcane, in both Brazil and the United States.
Another company focusing this space is Amyris, which has “programmed yeast strains to convert sugar into hydrocarbons similar to diesel and jet fuel. Earlier this year, U.S. Environment Protection Agency (EPA) certified the company’s fuels to be blended up to 50 percent with traditional diesel”. Amyris currently has pilot plants in California and Brazil.
Another approach to renewable hydrocarbons is the use of algae. Since 2005, Solazyme has been developing a technology engineer algae “to eat up biomass and, in big dark steel fermentation vats, turn out a “green” crude oil which could be further refined to a product of choice.” Even though the company still faces high costs of feedstock in the United States, it is confident that it will be able to produce biodiesel at $60 to $80 dollars in two or three years, particularly if it leverages the efficiency of sugarcane.
Filed under: Biofuels, Biotech, Cellulosic, Climate Change, Enviroment, Ethanol, Sugarcane | Tagged: Ethanol, UNICA, Sugarcane, Biofuels, amyris, advanced biofuels, Virent, LS9, ABFA, Solazyme
[...] The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will measure the greenhouse gas (GHG) impacts of algae-based biofuels in its final rule to implement the renewable fuels standard (RFS) in response to growing interest [...]
[...] firm Flagship Ventures, plans to begin construction of a pilot production plant in early 2010. Like Solazyme and other startups that aim to produce biofuels from such things as algae and wood chips, the [...]