The New Biofuel Age
5 Jul, 2006 10:04 am
As Indy-cars and automobile manufacturers rush to develop vehicles that use bioethanol as a part of their fuel mixture, it is interesting to reflect how far we have gone on the ?bio-fuel highway? and where are we going next. Although Henry Ford is well known for his Ford Model-T and his contribution to the industrial revolution, it is often over-looked that he was a visionary of how biofuels would propel these technologies. It was his vision that ethanol was the ?fuel of the future? and in his time was available from several mid-western service stations. Nonetheless, the availability of low-cost, enhanced performance petroleum fuels quickly displaced these first generation bioethanol service stations.
In the decades that followed world war two, petroleum supply and demand remained largely in balance except for the 1970’s energy crisis. However, in regards to future increases in supply the ‘writing has been on the wall’ as several oil producing nations have peaked in their oil generation capacity. And yet, overall global demand for liquid fuels has continued to increase. This increased demand is driven, in part, by aggressive economic growth that is occurring in several parts of the world. Clearly, because of petroleum’s finite nature, continued growth in transportation energy needs cannot be satisfied solely in the medium to long term from oil reserves. The increased use of biofuels derived from agro-energy crops, plant residues, wood and end-of-life plant derived materials is increasingly being acknowledged to have several positive ramifications including, enhanced national security, improved balance of trade, rural employment opportunities, and enhanced environmental performance parameters. In this content a series of researchers from Georgia Institute of Technology, Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Imperial College London came together about two years ago to build a collaborative research road map that could begin to address this generation’s biggest challenge, the need for sustainable, renewable biofuels from biomass. Our research roadmap titled “The Path Forward for Biofuels and Biomaterials” was published in Science {311(5760), 484 (2006)}. This report summarizes how the integrated biorefinery can address this key challenge. The review briefly summarizes the current state-of-the-art production technologies for biorefineries that have been established globally. We then discuss key technical research issues needed to allow the development of biofuels such that it could address more than 25% of our liquid fuels transportation needs. As we discussed in our article, this will be accomplished as science and engineering:
- Develop new energy crops with improved photosynthesis efficiencies delivering enhanced biomass production that is designed for efficient industrial processing.
- Provide new biopolymer separation and depolymerization technologies.
- Make available innovative chemoenzymatic treatments to convert biomass into biofuels and value-added chemicals/materials.
- Produce practical thermal syn-gas generation technologies for the production of biofuels, biopower and chemicals.
Many of these challenges were technically insurmountable in the 1970’s energy crisis. However the revolution in plant genomics, biotechnology, process chemistry/engineering, nanotechnology, catalyst chemistry, computational modeling/simulation and environmental impact assessment tools over the past 30 years now provide rational paths forward to completing the conversion of modern society to the bio-based and sustainable economy. Our article provided an integrated vision of these research challenges and opportunities. This paper and ongoing research is rapidly developing the technologies that will answer these challenges and pave the way to the new bioethanol service stations of tomorrow.
Key participants in the Science paper and research in this field include A.J. Ragauskas, J. Cairney, C.A. Eckert, J.W. Jr. Frederick, J.P. Hallett, D.J. Leak, C.L. Liotta, from Georgia Institute of Technology, C.K. Williams, G. Britovsek, R. Murphy, and R. Templer from Imperial College London; and B.H. Davison, J.R. Mielenz, and T. Tschaplinski from Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
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