What happened to advanced biofuels ?

I've got a post up at Peak Energy in developments in the realm of advanced biofuels, with cellulosic ethanol plants beginning to appear in the wild - What happened to advanced biofuels ?.

Plane biofuel to be made from eucalypts

The SMH reports that Virgin Blue, looking to escape the squeeze from scarcer fossil fuels, is partnering with a consortium including GE to produce biofuel for aviation from eucalypts - Plane biofuel to be made from eucalypt.

A consortium of companies is taking action by using eucalypt trees to develop a commercial biofuel for the Australian aviation industry.

"Innovation and creativity will play enormous roles as part of the transition to a low carbon future," said Ben Waters, director of ecomagination, GE Australia and New Zealand.

GE on Thursday announced it was joining Virgin Australia and other partners to research and develop the commercial biofuel.

The focus will be on using a thermochemical decomposition of organic material - at elevated temperatures in the absence of oxygen - to covert mallee eucalypt trees to the biofuel.

Mr Waters said a pilot biofuel production unit would be opened in Australia next year. ...

A recent CSIRO report estimated the aviation industry could cut greenhouse gas emissions by 17 per cent, generate more than 12,000 jobs and reduce Australia's reliance on aviation fuel imports by $2 billion per annum over the next 20 years through the adoption of biofuels.

Other members of the consortium include Renewable Oil Corporation, the Future Farm Industries CRC, and Canadian biofuels company, Dynamotive Energy Systems Corporation.

The report mentioned above may be Sustainable Aviation Fuels Road Map: Data assumptions and modelling

Cross posted from Peak Energy.

GMO Oil

The journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology (one of my favorite reads) has some interesting articles on the use of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) for the production of fuel and plastics precursors. While still in the research stage there is some hope that mixing and matching novel genes from different species coupled with appropriate control of gene expression can induce bacterial cultures to produce useful quantities of either fuel or bioplastics (or there precursors). The first article (below) is explained in some detail in a press release from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the US.

Metabolic Engineering of Clostridium cellulolyticum for Production of Isobutanol from Cellulose

Wendy Higashide, Yongchao Li, Yunfeng Yang, and James C. Liao

Producing biofuels directly from cellulose, known as consolidated bioprocessing, is believed to reduce costs substantially compared to a process in which cellulose degradation and fermentation to fuel are accomplished in separate steps. Here we present a metabolic engineering example for the development of a Clostridium cellulolyticum strain for isobutanol synthesis directly from cellulose. This strategy exploits the host's natural cellulolytic activity and the amino acid biosynthesis pathway and diverts its 2-keto acid intermediates toward alcohol synthesis. Specifically, we have demonstrated the first production of isobutanol to approximately 660 mg/liter from crystalline cellulose by using this microorganism.

From the Oak Ridge (edited) press release:

BESC scores a first with isobutanol directly from cellulose (March 2011)

In the quest for inexpensive biofuels, cellulose proved no match for a bioprocessing strategy and genetically engineered microbe developed by researchers at the Department of Energy's BioEnergy Science Center.

The team's work, published online in Applied and Environmental Microbiology, represents across-the-board savings in processing costs and time, plus isobutanol is a higher grade of alcohol than ethanol.

"Unlike ethanol, isobutanol can be blended at any ratio with gasoline and should eliminate the need for dedicated infrastructure in tanks or vehicles," said Liao. "Plus, it may be possible to use isobutanol directly in current engines without modification."

“Compared to ethanol, higher alcohols such as isobutanol are better candidates for gasoline replacement because they have an energy density, octane value and Reid vapor pressure - a measurement of volatility - that is much closer to gasoline”, Liao said.

While cellulosic biomass like corn stover and switchgrass is abundant and cheap, it is much more difficult to utilize than corn and sugar cane. This is due in large part because of recalcitrance, or a plant's natural defenses to being chemically dismantled.

While some Clostridium species produce butanol, these organisms typically do not digest cellulose directly. Other Clostridium species digest cellulose but do not produce butanol. None produce isobutanol, an isomer of butanol.

"In nature, no microorganisms have been identified that possess all of the characteristics necessary for the ideal consolidated bioprocessing strain, so we knew we had to genetically engineer a strain for this purpose," Li said.

Also at Science Daily - Inexpensive Biofuels: Isobutanol Made Directly from Cellulose

In a later edition of AEM, US and Japanese researchers (including some of the same team above) engineered E. coli to produce 1-Butanol in even higher quantities. This paper is open access.

Driving Forces Enable High-Titer Anaerobic 1-Butanol Synthesis in Escherichia coli

Claire R. Shen, Ethan I. Lan, Yasumasa Dekishima, Antonino Baez, Kwang Myung Cho and James C. Liao

1-Butanol, an important chemical feedstock and advanced biofuel, is produced by Clostridium species. Various efforts have been made to transfer the clostridial 1-butanol pathway into other microorganisms. However, in contrast to similar compounds, only limited titers of 1-butanol were attained. In this work, we constructed a modified clostridial 1-butanol pathway in Escherichia coli to provide an irreversible reaction catalyzed by trans-enoyl-coenzyme A (CoA) reductase (Ter) and created NADH and acetyl-CoA driving forces to direct the flux. We achieved high-titer (30 g/liter) and high-yield (70 to 88% of the theoretical) production of 1-butanol anaerobically, comparable to or exceeding the levels demonstrated by native producers. Without the NADH and acetyl-CoA driving forces, the Ter reaction alone only achieved about 1/10 the level of production. The engineered host platform also enables the selection of essential enzymes with better catalytic efficiency or expression by anaerobic growth rescue. These results demonstrate the importance of driving forces in the efficient production of nonnative products.

The introduction can be read to get the general idea but what it means in simpler language is…

The researchers genetically modified E. coli so that it could produce enzymes that made 1-butanol, the same enzymes used by Clostridia. But increased yield only occurs under special conditions (‘high driving force’). To force the organism to produce higher amounts of butanol several anaerobic (without oxygen) metabolic pathways (energy producing) were deleted. By deleting these pathways the organism accumulated increased levels of a chemical (NADH) which is required to produce the butanol. To make this work another enzyme system had to be modified. Thus genes from another species were introduced. Finally a gene from Clostridia that may limit the reaction was deleted. If you did high school chemistry this is essentially  Le Chatelier's Principle. Increasing the concentration of NADH and lowering the activation energy increases the production of butanol. The produced butanol was continually removed by gas sparging – thus also favouring production of more butanol.

Two important points to note: in this paper the team produced 30g/L of butanol compared to ~0.6g/L in the first paper, and in this second paper the source was not Cellulose but glucose. Once these two concepts are linked than we can expect the first small scale trials to quickly follow.

In the same edition, another team has some of the latest research in the production of bio-plastic using Palm Oil as feed stock.

Production of Poly(3-Hydroxybutyrate-co-3-Hydroxyhexanoate) from Plant Oil by Engineered Ralstonia eutropha Strains

Charles F. Budde, Sebastian L. Riedel, Laura B. Willis, ChoKyun Rha, and Anthony J. Sinskey

The polyhydroxyalkanoate (PHA) copolymer poly(3-hydroxybutyrate-co-3-hydroxyhexanoate) [P(HB-co-HHx)] has been shown to have potential to serve as a commercial bioplastic. [deleted]

Our group has engineered two R. eutropha strains that accumulate high levels of P(HB-co-HHx) with significant HHx content directly from palm oil, one of the world's most abundant plant oils. The strains express a newly characterized PHA synthase gene from the bacterium Rhodococcus aetherivorans I24. [deleted]

This study resulted in two engineered strains for production of P(HB-co-HHx) from palm oil. In palm oil fermentations, one strain accumulated 71% of its cell dry weight as PHA with 17 mol% HHx, while the other strain accumulated 66% of its cell dry weight as PHA with 30 mol% HHx.

Whether or not using Palm Oil as the feed stock  is a good thing… I’m not sure.

And finally, my personal observation is that somewhere between 20 – 30% (maybe more) of men do not wash there hands (at all or well) after going to the toilet (including #1s and #2s). In any case, if the toilet uses a bulk refill type detergent dispenser then washing hands may actually increase bacterial contamination!

Bacterial Hand Contamination and Transfer after Use of Contaminated Bulk-Soap-Refillable Dispensers

Carrie A. Zapka, Esther J. Campbell, Sheri L. Maxwell, Charles P. Gerba, Michael J. Dolan, James W. Arbogast, and David R. Macinga

Bulk-soap-refillable dispensers are prone to extrinsic bacterial contamination, and recent studies demonstrated that approximately one in four dispensers in public restrooms are contaminated. The purpose of this study was to quantify bacterial hand contamination and transfer after use of contaminated soap under controlled laboratory and in-use conditions in a community setting. Under laboratory conditions using liquid soap experimentally contaminated with 7.51 log10 CFU/ml of Serratia marcescens, an average of 5.28 log10 CFU remained on each hand after washing, and 2.23 log10 CFU was transferred to an agar surface. In an elementary-school-based field study, Gram-negative bacteria on the hands of students and staff increased by 1.42 log10 CFU per hand (26-fold) after washing with soap from contaminated bulk-soap-refillable dispensers. In contrast, washing with soap from dispensers with sealed refills significantly reduced bacteria on hands by 0.30 log10 CFU per hand (2-fold). [deleted]

These results demonstrate that washing with contaminated soap from bulk-soap-refillable dispensers can increase the number of opportunistic pathogens on the hands and may play a role in the transmission of bacteria in public settings.

Possibly conducted to support sales of sealed soap refills.

Grain$ of truth

Updated (8/3/11) news links at end.

Early Warning had a post recently decrying the proposed emergency policy of the Spanish Govt. to increase the biofuel content in their petrol.  One follow up post  then used US data for ethanol production to extrapolate the impact of US production to global food prices.  Thus linking the unrest in North Africa and around the gulf states with the increased cost of food due to biofuels (as indicated by corn ethanol).  But root causes of the increased cost of food are more complex than that.

Stuarts prime beef seems to be with the corn to ethanol conversion: many authors have argued that the conversion efficiency is poor - but it is probably the final act of a greater tragedy. Outside of the Americas, is corn a primary human staple? Even within the US its prime function seems to be as energy source for feed lot produced beef and a major ingredient in the US staple of fast foods (including supermarket ready meals).

While I agree that biofuels may be problematic, lumping all cereal crops together and then assuming that because 40% of US CORN production is going to ethanol that that is the cause of the rise in food prices seems to overly and dramatically simplify the issue.

Various international agencies have pointed out that the rise in GLOBAL food prices is a complex issue, with different causes in different regions.

The Overseas Development Institute has a report out that says (my emphasis added):

Rising food prices: Cause for concern

Policy conclusions
Food prices have been rising since the early 2000s • but spiked in early 2008. Even if they start to decline later this year, the next ten years will see food prices at levels above those seen in the early 2000s, thanks to higher energy costs, demand for biofuels, growing demands for staples as populations grow, and for higher value foods, such as livestock products, as incomes rise.

• Prompt assistance is needed for countries facing surging food and energy import bills and for low-income households

• Low stocks threaten the functioning of agencies such as the WFP and prompt calls for land to be switched back into food production, from biofuels throughout the OECD, and from “set-aside” in the EU.

• In the medium term, economic and agricultural growth can offset the damage, but this will require more determined efforts to boost food production.

• Beyond action, a better understanding is needed of the 2008 price spike, to ensure that such events are rare. Increased variability of weather from climate change makes future price spikes more likely. If more can be learned from the current shock, then dealing with future ones may be easier.

Why have food prices risen so much in recent years?
The prices of staple foods on world markets have fallen substantially in real terms over the last 50 years, with wheat in 1999 at less than a quarter of its 1950 price. Since the early 2000s, however, food prices have been rising. Within the 12 months up to early 2008, the FAO food price index rose by 57%. The causes of these price rises are both short- and long-term.
The former include, above all, low harvests in some exporting countries — notably Australia where drought has hit wheat production — against already low world cereal stocks. Speculation in commodity prices by investors looking for a better option than stocks and shares may also have contributed. Some countries, alarmed by mounting prices, have imposed taxes, minimum prices, quotas and outright bans on exports of staples that have exacerbated world price rises.

The oil price rise also feeds through to the demand side: once oil prices rise above US$60 a barrel – it is currently well over $100 – most forms of biofuel compete with oil and gas, so that foods may be diverted to energy production. This is reinforced by targets in both USA and the EU, and by subsidies to refiners in the USA.

The main effects will of course be on the poor (US not included) where 1/3rd to 1/2 of household income may be spent on food. However the higher food prices may also stimulate reinvestment in farm production, which in lower income countries is labour intensive, thus partially offsetting the effects through increased employment. Thus this report suggests that, yes, biofuels have an impact, but that low harvests, speculation and “panic” (ie restricting exports) all played a part. The politically motivated farm subsidies of the US are a particular problem.