CCRES Low Carbon Fuels in Aviation

 photo by CCRES  

Flasks of Algae at the CCRES Lab in Zagreb,Croatia

Biofuels are key to industry’s future

 In a bid to reduce its dependency on imported oil and tackle global warming, the EU has committed to raising the share of fuels from renewable sources in transport to 10% by 2020 – including biofuels, hydrogen and green electricity.

For the growing aviation industry, the switch to plant-based fuel is seen as not only environmentally smart, but a sensible financial move in an era or rising conventional fuel prices and worries about supply security.

Biofuel use in passenger aircraft is still a novelty, and industry officials are urging governments to help lift supplies, much as policies in the EU and United States have created a flourishing market in plant-based oils for motor vehicles.

The industry contends that sustainable fuels will reduce emissions even as passenger traffic grows. The airline sector has committed to meet 10% of its overall fuel consumption with biofuels by 2017 – though the goal is ambitious given that it is to account for just 1% by 2015...

Meanwhile, more doubts are being raised about the environmental benefits of biofuels.

The United Nations Environment Programme has warned that even though burning plant-based fuels can produce significantly lower levels of carbon emissions, production and land clearing to make way for new crops “may reduce carbon-savings or even lead to an increase.”

European conservation groups say the EU and European governments should wait to embrace aviation biofuels until there is proof of their environmental benefits.

 ”Given the right conditions, algae can double its volume overnight. Microalgae are the earth’s most productive plants –– 10 to 15 times more prolific in biomass than the fastest growing land plant exploited for biofuel production. While soy produces some 50 gallons of oil per acre per year; canola, 150 gallons; and palm, 650 gallons, algae can produce up to 15,000 gallons per acre per year. In addition, up to 50 percent (or more) of algae biomass (dry weight) is comprised of oil, whereas oil-palm trees—currently the most efficient large-scale source of feedstock oil to make biofuels—yield approximately 20 percent of their weight in oil,” says Zeljko Serdar, President of CCRES

 Airlines have committed to ramping up their use of biofuels in the belief that they can contribute to achieving the sectors pledges on carbon-neutral growth. For 2050, the EU foresees 40% use of "sustainable low carbon fuels" in aviation.

Croatian Center of Renewable Energy Sources (CCRES)

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CCRES ALGAE TEAM

 

  Algae are emerging to be one of the most promising long-term, sustainable sources of biomass and oils for fuel, food, feed, and other co-products. What makes them so attractive are the large number and wide variety of benefits associated with how and where they grow.

Nearly all these benefits stem from the fact that these plants have evolved over billions of years to produce and store energy in the form of oil, and they do this more efficiently than any other known natural or engineered process.

Here are 10 reasons why algae are a promising new source of fuel and other products:

1) Algae Grow Fast
Algae can double their numbers every few hours, can be harvested daily, and have the potential to produce a volume of biomass and biofuel many times greater than that of our most productive crops.

2) Algae Can Have High Biofuel Yields
Algae store energy in the form of oils and carbohydrates, which, combined with their high productivity, means they can produce from 2,000 to as many as 5,000 gallons of biofuels per acre per year.

3) Algae Consume CO2
Like any other plant, algae, when grown using sunlight, consume (or absorb) carbon dioxide (CO2) as they grow, releasing oxygen (O2) for the rest of us to breathe. For high productivity, algae require more CO2, which can be supplied by emissions sources such as power plants, ethanol facilities, and other sources.

4) Algae Do Not Compete With Agriculture
Algae cultivation uses both land that in many cases is unsuitable for traditional agriculture, as well as water sources that are not useable for other crops, such as sea-, brackish- and wastewater. As such, algae-based fuels complement biofuels made from traditional agricultural processes.

5) Microalgal Biomass Can Be Used for Fuel, Feed and Food
Microalgae can be cultivated to have a high protein and oil content, for example, which can be used to produce either biofuels or animal feeds, or both. In addition, microalgal biomass, which is rich in micronutrients, is already used for dietary supplements to advance human health.

6) Macroalgae Can Be Grown in the Sea
Macroalgae (seaweeds) are grown in the sea, or even on land with seawater, and their sugars can be converted into biofuels and chemicals.

7) Algae Can Purify Wastewaters
Algae thrive in nutrient-rich waters like municipal waste waters (sewage), animal wastes and some industrial effluents, at the same time purifying these wastes while producing a biomass suitable for biofuels production.

8) Algal Biomass Can Be Used as an Energy Source
After oil extraction, the remaining algal biomass can be dried and “pelletized” and used as fuel that is burned in industrial boilers and other power generation sources.

9) Algae Can Be Used to Produce Many Useful Products
Algae can be cultivated to produce a variety of products for large to small markets: plastics, chemical feedstocks, lubricants, fertilizers, and even cosmetics. See other products algae is used for here.

10) The Algae Industry is a Job Creation Engine
Algae can grow in a wide variety of climates in a multitude of production methods, from ponds to photobioreactors to fermenters, and thus will create a wide variety of jobs throughout the United States, from research to engineering, from construction to farming, from marketing to financial services.

CCRES ALGAE TEAM

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Invest in Milking Microbes

 

From Bacteria to Biofuel, Invest in Milking Microbes

What if we could take a soil bacteria and tinker with its genes to create a biofuel much in the same way that a cow produces milk? Well, we can, or at least a team of scientists has figured out how to do it, and the next step is figuring out how to make it happen on a commercial scale.

The common soil bacterium Raistonia eutropha produces complex carbon compounds when stressed, and according to MIT, its scientists have engineered the bacterium’s genes to produce isobutanol, which can be substituted for or blended with gasoline. 

When the bacterium is stressed it stops growing and uses the energy to produce fuel, expelling the fuel rather than storing it up, which means that it scientists can figure out how to do this on a commercial scale it would be less costly than other ways of producing biofuel. Why? Because typically a microorganism producing biofuel is destroyed in the extraction process. This genetically tweaked bacterium simply expels and continues to produce.
Earlier this month, MIT scientist Christopher Brigham detailed the findings, along with his co-author, in the Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology journal. The team is led by professor of biology Anthony Sinskey.
According to Brigham, the bacterium is enters into a carbon-storage mode when its source of essential nutrients (nitrate or phosphate) is restricted. “What it does is take whatever carbon is available, and stores it in the form of a polymer, which is similar in its properties to a lot of petroleum-based plastics.”

So now that the MIT team has succeeded in tinkering with the bacterium’s genes enough to get it to convert carbon into isobutanol, the next step is to figure out how to optimize the process to increase the rate of production and design bioreactors to scale the process to industrial levels.
It’s all about transport, Brigham notes in the journal, and the most significant aspect of this discovery is that “we didn’t have to add a transport system to get [the fuel] out of the cell.”
Another key element of success is the production of isobutanol, as compared with other biofuels. The benefit of isobutanol is that it can be used in cars without modifications, as a direct substitute for gasoline, and in fact, according to scientists, has already been used in race cars.

What are the chances of bringing production to industrial levels? In theory, pretty good. In a press release, MIT quotes Mark Silby, assistant professor of biology at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth, as saying, “This approach has several potential advantages over the production of ethanol from corn. Bacterial systems are scalable, in theory allowing production of large amounts of biofuel in a factory-like environment.”
Furthermore, Silby adds, “This system in particular has the potential to derive carbon from waste products or carbon dioxide, and thus is not competing with the food supply.”

It’s a risky investment while the industrial-scale potential is still unknown, but sooner than later someone will figure out how to make this viable and then it will take the biofuels market by storm. The US Department of Energy has its money on success, as the research is being funded by its Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy (ARPA-E). And we agree that while the risk is great, the potential is greater.

By. Oilprice.com Analysts

CCRES ALGAE PROJECT
part of 
Croatian Center of Renewable Energy Sources (CCRES)

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