Turning trees, grass, and other biomass into fuel for automobiles and airplanes is a costly and complex process. Biofuel researchers are working to change that, envisioning a future where cellulosic ethanol, an alcohol derived from plant sugars, is as common and affordable at the gas station as gasoline.
The key to making this vision a reality? Unraveling the tightly wound network of molecules -- cellulose, hemicellulose, and lignin -- that make up the cell wall of plants for easier biofuel processing.
"BESC scientists created lots of different lignins randomly through genetic modification," Smith said. "They found one that worked for them, but they wanted to know why it worked."
To find the answer, Smith's team turned to Titan, a 27-petaflop supercomputer at the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF), a DOE Office of Science User Facility.
Cellulose, a complex carbohydrate made up of glucose strands, comprises nearly half of all plant matter. It gives plants their structure, and it's the critical substance needed to make cellulosic ethanol. To break down cellulose, one must get past lignin, a waste product of biofuel production that requires expensive treatments to isolate and remove. By throwing a wrench in the plant cell's lignin assembly line, BESC scientists found they could boost biofuel production by 38 percent.
United Airlines has announced a USD30 million equity investment in alternative fuels developer Fulcrum BioEnergy. The company is pioneering the development and commercialisation of low-cost sustainable aviation biofuel.
The buy-in is the single largest investment by a US airline in alternative fuels and marks United as a leader in the US aviation industry in advancing low-cost aviation biofuels and greenhouse gas emissions reduction.
Under the long-term agreement with Fulcrum, United will have the opportunity to purchase at least 90 million gallons p/a of sustainable aviation fuel, for a minimum of 10 years. There is also a secondary agreement, which could see United and Fulcrum jointly develop up to five biofuels projects located near major United hubs. This is expected to have the potential to produce up to 180 million gallons of fuel p/a.
Fulcrum uses cheaply available municipal solid waste as a feedstock to produce a drop-in biofuel that meets United’s technical requirements. A similar method is already being used with some success with British Airways’ partnership with Solena at London City Airport. Fulcrum already has a 10-year deal with Cathay Pacific, to supply large volumes of low-carbon jet fuel, equivalent to around 2% of Cathay’s annual fuel consumption.
On the surface of it buying into an alternative fuel maker at the present time seems something of a strange move for the airline. Oil prices turned decisively downward in 2H2014 and have been bumping along at between USD45-65 per barrel for the past six to seven months. Long-term forecasts indicate only moderate price growth out to 2020, although oil prices are notoriously volatile.
The key to this agreement is that the biofuel is to be purchased at "a cost that is competitive with conventional jet fuel." At present, approved alternative and renewable aviation fuels cost anywhere from a third more per gallon to several dozen times the price of conventional jet kerosene, depending on the feedstock, generation techniques used and scale of production.
Outside the potential cost advantages, the deal also has significant potential to reduce United Airlines' greenhouse gas emissions. Fulcrum advertises its renewable jet fuel as providing a greater than 80% reduction in lifecycle carbon emissions when compared to conventional jet fuel.
First to step into the waste-to-fuel arena was British Airways (BA), which in 2012 signed an investment and offtake agreement with Solena Fuels to build GreenSky London venture to convert 640,000 tons of municipal solid waste (MSW) a year to liquid fuels using high-temperature gasification and the Fischer-Tropsch (F-T) process. The plant, at a former refinery in Thurrock, east of London, is to be operational by 2017. BA has agreed to buy all 16 million gallons of jet fuel produced annually by the plant for 11 years—about 2% of its total consumption, but enough to support operations at nearby London City Airport.
Back in 1927, 100,000 people flooded Le Bourget Airport in Paris to greet Charles Lindbergh as he completed the first solo, non-stop, transatlantic crossing by plane. Now, it’s done by dozens of pilots every day, who have no one to meet them except the driver for their offsite, low-cost motel. Sigh, it’s the nature of news.
In the world of aviation biofuels, the bands and the bunting are rolling out less frequently. But mostly, because the sector has moved out of a noise-filled early R&D phase and is heading towards deployment. Someday, aviation biofuels will be as routine as topping off a fuel farm, and the world will have changed so completely that no will think about it any more than we think about the miracle of the wheel.
For a few years, readers became accustomed to a flurry of R&D partnerships, market studies, financing announcements, technical milestone reveations and sexy certification efforts where airlines seem to fly all over the place for a handful of flights demonstrating that planes won’t fall out of the sky with aviation biofuels.
Now, the radio silence descends as the process of detailed engineering of plants begins, construction gets underway, followed by the inevitable yet interminable commissioning period where a plant may spend up to 3 years reaching nameplate capacity and steady-state operations for a novel processing technology using novel feedstocks.
We’re some distance from aviation biofuels as “business as usual” but we do see quite a bit more “in business” activity.
Solena Fuels in partnership with British Airways has committed to building the world’s first facility to convert landfill waste into jet fuel. The chosen location for this innovative project is the Thames Enterprise Park, part of the site of the former Coryton oil refinery in Thurrock, Essex. The site has excellent transport links and existing fuel storage facilities.
This ground-breaking fuel project is set to revolutionise the production of sustainable aviation fuel. Approximately 575,000 tonnes of post-recycled waste normally destined for landfill or incineration will instead be converted into 120,000 tonnes of clean burning liquid fuels using Solena’s innovative integrated technology. British Airways has made a long-term commitment to purchase all 50,000 tonnes per annum of the jet fuel produced at market competitive rates.
Price is Pain Point in March to Commercialization
More than 1,500 trial flights have been flown using some blend of jet fuel and biofuel, typically a 50/50 split (the most allowed by current industry standards). However, no commercially viable aviation biofuels currently exist. Jet fuel accounts for about 30 percent of the industry’s operating costs.
In the U.S., the Federal Aviation Administration is aiming for the aviation industry (both commercial and military) to use one billion gallons of sustainable jet biofuel starting from 2018, “with the intent of encouraging commercial production,” according to a recent GAO report. That’s about 5 percent of the predicted fuel consumption for military and domestic airlines in 2018, the FAA told GAO investigators.
“Achieving price competitiveness for alternative jet fuels is the overarching challenge to developing a viable market,” the GAO report says. The report said the most frequently cited impediments to competitive pricing were “high development costs and the uncertainty of federal regulations and policies” and that “federal activities are needed to help advance the alternative jet-fuels industry.”
The GAO report also states that alternative jet fuels would need a subsidy ranging from 35 cents to $2.86 per gallon to be price competitive with conventional jet fuels in 2020.
There are more than 20 biofuel development projects in the U.S. alone, according to a U.S. Agriculture Department report. “These projects utilize a variety of feedstock and process technologies to produce renewable fuels, and several have the potential to produce aviation biofuel,” the report says. “However, these projects need additional funding to support biofuel development in the near term.”
Research shows that so-called “green diesel,” made from recycled animal fat, used cooking oil and inedible corn oil, and already used in for ground transportation, can power aircraft, too. Unlike other biofuels, green diesel is available today in commercial quantities, about 800 million gallons a year, from the U.S., Europe and Singapore, but that’s still little more 1 percent of the total needed by the thirsty global aviation industry. Another huge selling point: green diesel, at about $3 per gallon with government subsidies, is cost competitive with jet fuel. Green diesel is an important step in the evolution of viable sustainable aviation biofuels, Julie Felgar, managing director of Boeing Commercial Airplanes Environmental Strategy and Integration, told the Chicago Tribune. “A few years ago, people said this was a complete longshot," she said. "We still have a lot of work to do, but it will be an easier road to travel."
Despite the challenges, “the race is on to develop viable and cost-competitive supply chains using sustainably sourced feedstocks that can be readily processed into finished fuels on an industrial scale” for aviation and maritime biofuels, according to Navigant Research.
Led by North America, production capacity of aviation and maritime biofuels is expected to reach 3.3 billion gallons by 2024, representing 1.5 percent of total aviation and maritime consumption, the Navigant Research report says. The report forecasts that a cumulative total of 18.2 billion to 19.6 billion gallons of renewable aviation and maritime biofuel could be produced between 2014 and 2024.
All that advancement won’t come cheap. It’ll cost—conservatively—an estimated $30 billion to $40 billion by 2020 to reach the IATA’s “aspirational target” of 6 percent of global jet fuel supply met by advanced biofuels,” says the Navigant report.
“[B]iofuels will account for a low proportion of global aviation consumption before 2020, but could make a significant contribution over a longer time horizon,” says an FAA Center of Excellence report. The report says that a high price on carbon, combined with some “optimistic assumptions” could result in 100 percent biofuel usage by airlines globally by the early 2040s. “With no carbon price and slow development of biofuel technologies, biofuels account for 3% of aviation fuel use in 2030 and 37% in 2050,” the report says.
Converting grazing land into fields to grow crops for biofuels could provide up to 30 per cent of the world’s energy needs, according to a report.
The report says at least 500 million hectares are available for sustainable biofuel production even when rising food demand, growing urbanisation and the desire to preserve forest and protected lands are taken into account. Most of this land is in Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa, and is being used for low-intensity animal grazing, it says.
The study predicts that, if biofuel technology continues to develop rapidly, only around 50-200 million hectares would be needed to grow the biomass needed for biofuels to provide 30 per cent of global energy by 2050. A lot of this land could come from arid, low-intensity grazing lands, which could instead be used to, for example, grow agave for ethanol production, the authors write.
A lot of this land could come from arid, low-intensity grazing lands
Glaucia Mendes Souza, a biologist at the University of Sao Paulo and one of the report’s editors, says mixing land uses would help developing countries integrate biofuel production into their existing agricultural systems. “By combining forestry with bioenergy production or integrating areas of grasslands and woodlands, countries would be able to minimise the effects of climate change but not compromise food safety,” she says.
Around 87 per cent of global energy demand is currently met by climate-altering fossil fuels, says the report.
But it points out that “inefficiently used land, extensive pastures, degraded lands and excess agricultural capacity” stand in the way of growing more biofuels, especially in developing countries.
A lot of this land could come from arid, low-intensity grazing lands, which could instead be used to, for example, grow agave for ethanol production, the authors write.
These conclusions are based on an analysis of almost 2,000 scientific studies and assessments on global land use, led by researchers from the Sao Paulo Research Foundation in Brazil and the Scientific Committee on Problems of the Environment, a global network that reviews scientific knowledge on environmental issues. Glaucia Mendes Souza, a biologist at the University of Sao Paulo and one of the report’s editors, says mixing land uses would help developing countries integrate biofuel production into their existing agricultural systems.
In the third category of agro-ecosystems, arid systems, biomass/bioenergy production has not been implemented but may be possible by using water-efficient and drought tolerant plants such as Agave (Figure 3.6) and Opuntia as dedicated energy crops (Sommerville et al. 2010).
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