Mascoma Corp is one of the two cellulosic ethanol companies that General Motors invested in earlier this year. Dr. Lee Lynd is one of Mascoma's co-founders and he and his collaborators at Dartmouth College have published a paper that gives some more insight into Mascoma's process. They have created a new genetically-engineered bacteria aimed at producing ethanol from biomass. The key to this new microbe is its ability to function at higher temperatures than the naturally-occurring types that have been used previously. The natural bacteria can't function at temperatures above 37°C and require a significant amount of cellulase enzyme which greatly increases the cost of the process. By operating at temperatures above 50°C, the new microbe requires only 40 percent of the amount of cellulase. The natural bacteria also produce another by-product besides ethanol, organic acids. The resulting output then needs further processing to separate the alcohol from the acid. The genetically-engineered microbes apparently produce no acids, with the fuel being the only product.

[Source: NewScientistTech]

Aside from metals such as iron, steel and aluminum, perhaps the most common material in cars is plastic. Most of the plastic made today is derived from petroleum. Besides the raw materials used, a lot pf greenhouse gases are produced in the processing of plastics. Bio-materials have been a major research area in recent years including Ford's new soy-foam seats. Researchers from the Hawaii Natural Energy Institute have a developed a class of bioplastics called Polyhydroxyalkanoates that can be produced as a byproduct of cellulosic ethanol production. According to the research, PHA can be produced with only 0.49 kg CO₂/kg of resin. Typical plastics production emits 2-3 kg of CO₂/kg of resin. The energy required in the process is also reduced from 78-88 MJ to only 44 MJ per kg of resin. With the coming of cellulosic ethanol production in the next few years, this could be a potentially huge boon to making the businesses more viable.

[Source: Hawaii Natural Energy Institute, via Green Car Congress]

A paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reports that new breeds of switchgrass yields 20-30 percent higher than earlier strains. This shows that it may be a more viable plant source to produce ethanol than previously imagined. The document states that these newer breeds produce 540 percent more energy than the energy consumed in its production, up from a previous study that estimated yield at 343 percent.

Kennet Vogel, from the US Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service based at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln, said that the results increased because the study was made at farm scale. He also expects higher outputs when selecting crops specifically for energy production, because they were using plants developed for pasture and conservation.

Related:

• Project BioReGen: Planting trees to recover a damaged ecosystem
• Royal Nedalco will open a cellullosic ethanol plant using yeast, not bacteria
• First cellulosic biomethane station to be opened in Austria

[Source: AFP via Domestic Fuel]

As yet another country clamoring for the lofty goal of being the alternative/renewable fuel leader, India is making some advances. And the goal seems achievable: one million plus hydrogen-powered vehicles on their roads in the next thirteen years. The hardest part is obviously getting a hydrogen infrastructure in place, but the difficulty of the task doesn't seem to faze them.

Vilas Muttenvar, the New and Renewable Energy Union Minister, says he looks forward to working with the European Union to meet their bio-fuel targets. Those targets involve the use of waste and crop-grown cellulosic materials. While not much emphasis was put on the point, it was at least a little gladdening to see that one of their focuses will be "reducing the environmental impact of bio-fuel usage." After all, if we're just changing the way we ruin the Earth, we haven't really made any progress, have we?

[Source: Daily India]

Dr. Atkins may have thought that carbs were bad for you, but Virginia Tech researchers think they could be good for your car. Y.H. Percival Zhang and his colleagues want to use sugary carbohydrates combined with water and a mixture of enzymes to produce hydrogen on the fly. The polysaccharides would be substances like starch or cellulose that would be blended with a combination of enzymes that wouldn't naturally be found together.

The enzymes would feed off the starch to get energy to split the water and produce hydrogen and carbon dioxide. The hydrogen would be used to power a fuel cell and the water from that process would be recycled back into the enzyme process. Since the carbon dioxide is coming from biomass it is environmentally neutral. The equivalent of a twelve gallon fuel tank would hold enough starch to produce 4kg of hydrogen which could provide 300 miles of range with the latest fuel cells.

The sugar-hydrogen-fuel cell process evidently has an energy conversion rate three times higher than sugar-ethanol-internal combustion. Now they need to increase the reaction rates for the hydrogen to make it fast enough to be useful as a transport fuel and reduce the cost of the enzymes. The question is how much biomass is necessary to produce 27kg of starch? Then they have to ensure that our cars don't get to fat from all the carbs. And this hydrogen idea can't even be called an oil industry scam.

[Source: Virginia Tech]

About 40 years ago, Iowa State Chemistry professor John Verkade based his doctoral dissertation on a chemical compound, and only realized a few years ago that it may very well hold the key to breaking down the cellulose that forms the structure of a plant's cell walls.

The way the story goes is that Verkade had initially thought someone was joking around by repeatedly stealing a wooden stick from one of his beakers. Soon he realized that the stick wasn't being stolen by a prankster. It was being broken down by the compound it was sitting in. At the time he marked it up as an interesting observation and asked the university to consider a patent application, but the request was denied. Of course, this was well before the notion of cellulosic ethanol production was on the national radar.

It was George Kraus, a colleague of Verkade, who planted the seed in Verkade's head by suggesting that the compound could be used to break down the cellulose walls inside plants opening the door for cellulosic ethanol production. Verkade in turn sought funding and received a $125,000 grant from the Energy Department via the Midwest Consortium for Biobased Products and Bioenergy.

The initial results of his research were discouraging until they began treating the feedstock with equal amounts of the chemical compound and water. So far, they have been able to break down 85 to 95 percent of the cellulose. Currently, Verkade and Reed Oshel, an Iowa State graduate student, are working to develop a cheaper version of the compound.

[Source: Physorg.com]

Last week, ethanol was a big story on 60 Minutes. As a follow-up, the Energy Stock Blog has an interview with Professor Daniel Kammen, the founding director of The Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory at Berkeley. On the ESB, Kammen says that while ethanol is a short-term solution, the future does not belong to hydrogen but to cellulosic ethanol. Kammen expects cellulosic ethanol will make up between one third and one half of our total gasoline one day, and that E85 will be 15 percent of U.S. transport fuels in the next few years.

Cellulosic ethanol is ethanol made not from edible substances like corn or soybeans, but the cellulose in plants. Cellulose is present in all parts of plants, which means all parts of a plant can be turned into ethanol and results in higher yields per acre. Cellulosic ethanol is still an emerging technology and is available commercially only in limited areas.  You can see and read more about the original 60 Minutes piece here.

[Source: Energy Stock Blog]