Corn—Switchgrass Biofuel

Biofuels Get Help: Switchgrass Meets Corn

Lignocellulosic Biomass

For many experts, advanced biofuels made from plants, specifically lignocellulosic biomass, are the most promising fuels for our future. As an alternative to petroleum-based liquids, biofuels are clean, green, renewable, and a domestic source of transportation energy. In fact, studies show that fuel could be derived from lignocellulosic biomass and sustainably grown in the United States, replacing the dependence on our foreign petroleum-based transportation fuels. Mother Nature, however, makes the breakdown of these plants and the extraction of the necessary sugars a challenge.

Grains are an exception. Their starch sugars are easily released, unlike the complex polysaccharides that are locked within the lignin, a tough woody material found within the walls of a plant cell. For advanced biofuels to be economically competitive, scientists need to find cheap ways of releasing the polysaccharides from their prisons and reducing them to fermentable sugars that can be synthesized into fuel. And that’s exactly what the corn gene is doing for the first part of the process.

Switchgrass

For years switchgrass has been highly touted by scientists as a source of biofuel. It offers a number of advantages over other plant feedstock. It’s drought resistant and grows year-round. It doesn’t compete with cropland and can be grown in marginal soil. It’s tough and hardy and requires little fertilization. The challenge lies in extracting its sugars.

Scientists at the Department of Energy’s Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI) coupled with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agriculture Research Service (ARS) introduced the maize (corn) gene to switchgrass in the hopes that it would lessen the amount of lignin in the cell walls of the switchgrass plant. And that’s precisely what happened. The added gene doubled the starch in the cell walls and made it easier for the scientists to extract.

Corn Gene

On a cellular level, the corn gene makes the switchgrass plant believe it’s in a juvenile state. This translates into less lignin being released, as well as prevents the plant from producing flowering. As a result, more sugars are retained within the plant, and seeds aren’t released to contaminate the native plant population.

"We show that Cg1 switchgrass biomass is easier for enzymes to break down and also releases more glucose during saccharification," says Blake Simmons, a chemical engineer who heads JBEI's Deconstruction Division and was one of the principal investigators for this research. When compared to wild switchgrass, lignin levels were down and glucose levels higher.

An added bonus to switchgrass fuel is that it’s carbon neutral, so it doesn’t contribute to global climate change unlike corn-derived ethanol fuels. This means that the moment your garage doors swing open until you reach your destination, the switchgrass-corn partnership will ensure that your fuel is clean and sustainable with no increase to your carbon footprint. It’s a match made in environmental heaven.

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Chris Keenan is a green and general blog writer. He writes for many sites including Precision Garage Door. Chris also maintains a personal house and garden blog.

The Fuel of the Future

"Gasoline is growing scarcer, and therefore dearer, all the time... Automobiles cannot use gasoline for all time, of that I am sure, and alcohol seems to be the best substitute that has yet appeared." (US House and Senate hearings on the "Free Alcohol" bill, 1906)

The development of the internal combustion engine can be traced back to the early 19th century when at least a dozen inventors were involved with development of  prototypes. Two early pioneers, Samual Morey and Nicholas Otto, used ethyl alcohol to fuel their internal combustion engine prototypes.  Samuel Morey developed the first internal combustion engine in America in 1826.  Nicholas Otto, who eventually invented the "Otto-cycle" engine used ethyl alcohol on his early prototype of the internal combustion engine.  Progressing into the early 20th century there was much concern over the supply of gasoline.  President Roosevelt, a foe of the oil industry, initiated the repeal of the alcohol sales tax in 1906.  In theory, industrial alcohol would be a new market for American farmers and an alternative to the oil trust.  At the same time, British, French and German scientists were busily designing engines that could handle a variety of fuels, including ethyl alcohol.  These countries were not only worried about the longevity of oil supplies but also the erratic oil supply from Russia and America.  Oil trust battles between the Rothschilds, the Nobels, Rockefeller and Marcus Samuel (Shell)  resulted in significant oil price volatility.  France and Germany were particularly eager to develop a fuel that could be distilled from farm products as neither country had a domestic oil supply. Studies of alcohol as a fuel for internal combustion engines began in 1906 where it was found that significantly higher engine compression ratios could be achieved with alcohol but at lower B.T.U.  The fuel economy was virtually equal for alcohol and gasoline.  The U.S. Geological Service (USGS) later concluded that alcohol was "a more ideal fuel than gasoline" with better efficiency albeit with higher cost.  Alcohol had many advantages over gasoline with no smoke or disagreeable odors. By 1925, most people in the automotive industry, including Henry Ford, believed that ethyl alcohol was the "fuel of the future".  There were at least two events in history that prevented the widespread use of ethyl alcohol as an engine fuel.  The first event was the introduction of prohibition in the United States in 1919.  During prohibition the manufacture, transportation, import, export, and sale of alcoholic beverages was prohibited.  As a result, corn-alcohol stills, which many farmers used to make low cost ethanol fuel with, were banned.  Prohibition taxes were introduced for industrial alcohol usage, also causing a significant reduction in the use of ethanol as a fuel. In the early 1920s there was much concern about the demise of oil supplies.  "High quality oil" was becoming scarce and lower grade oil was being brought onto the market.  The use of low quality oil in cars resulted in engine knock.  Geological experts also believed that there would only be 20 to 30 years of oil stocks left in the United States.  As a result there was a great deal of work done investigating the useability of low quality oil in automobile engines.  Eventually GM selected tetra-ethyl lead (TEL) as an anti-knock gasoline additive.  We know this today as "leaded gasoline".  This solution was the most profitable alternative but GM would lead the public to believe that it was the only alternative.  Certainly there was pressure put on GM research to come up with a patentable solution.  There were certainly other viable additives including ethyl alcohol but was not patentable. This leads up to the second significant event which occurred in 1924 / 1925 timeframe.  17 workers died and many other workers were exposed to lead poisoning at two separate TEL manufacturing facilities.  Charles F. Kettering[1] and Thomas Midgley Jr.[2] subsequently told the government that no alternatives existed. "So far as science knows at the present time, tetraethyl lead is the only material available which can bring about these [antiknock] results, which are of vital importance to the continued economic use by the general public of all automotive equipment, and unless a grave and inescapable hazard exists in the manufacture of tetraethyl lead, its abandonment cannot be justified."  - Thomas Midgley Jr.  1925. In this era, farmers were hurting as a result of prohibition and desperately needed new markets to sell grain products in.  It was certainly plausible for the farm industry to produce enough ethanol to replace TEL as the anti-knock additive of choice. The Public Health Service, after investigating the accidents allowed leaded gasoline to remain on the market.   It is safe to say that in this particular instance the Public Health Service did not do their job.  Since 1926, the production and distribution of TEL has cost the health and lives of many workers.  The United States banned TEL in 1986, not because of health concerns, but because of it's adverse effect on exhaust catalysts.  Meanwhile, other countries such as the UK curtailed the use of alkyl leads due to the adverse health effects of lead emissions, especially on children.  Today the United States is a world leader in the production of ethanol with over 7 billion gallons of ethanol-blended  gasoline produced.  This represents approximately 12% of fuel sales including E85 (85% ethanol 15% gasoline) and E10 (10% ethanol 90% gasoline). [1] Charles F. Kettering headed up General Motors research division starting in 1919. [2] Thomas Midgley Jr. was Kettering's chief fuel researcher.  He developed both the tetra-ethyl lead (TEL) additive to gasoline and chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs).  One historian declared that Midgley "had more impact on the atmosphere than any other single organism in Earth history."

Seaweed Farms Hold Promise For Biofuel Production

Seaweed Farms Solve Many Biofuel Issues

A group of researchers from Tokyo University (Marine Science and Technology), Mitsubishi Research Institute, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and several other private-sector firms envision a 10,000 square kilometer seaweed farm at Yamatotai, a shallow fishing area in the middle of the Sea of Japan. The researchers estimate that the farm will produce about 20 million kiloliters of bioethanol per year. This is equal to one third of Japanese fuel consumption per year.

Algae/seaweed has long been discussed as an alternative option to produce bio fuel. Most biofuel today is produced from corn and sugar cane. According to the proposal the seaweed to be grown in the farm is from sargasso seaweed (hondawara). This type of seaweed grows rapidly.

There will be floating bioreactors, these are special facilities that use enzyme to break the seaweed down into sugars. The seaweed would then be prepared for conversion into ethanol. The conversion will be done at sea and tankers then transport the ethanol to land.

There are two main components of algae/seaweed that raise interest in producing bioethanol. They are Fucoidan and Alginic Acid. While an enzyme for breaking down fucoidan has already been discovered, the
scientists are looking for an enzyme that breaks down alginic acid.  They are also looking at the possibility of genetically modifying the algae.

The group is also conducting research on how to develop the production plants and attract investment. Other participants in the project include NEC Toshiba Space Systems, Mitsubishi Electric, IHI, Sumitomo Electric Industries, Shimizu Corporation, Toa Corporation, Kanto Natural Gas Development Co., Ltd., and the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC).

The researchers claim that in addition to serving as a source of fuel, the seaweed will also serve a noble duty by cleaning the Sea of Japan.  According to Professor Masahiro Notoya from Tokyo University of Marine Science and Technology, the seaweed would work to remove some of the excess nutrient salts that flow into the sea from the surrounding land masses.

Here some advantages fo algae/seaweed compared to other biofuels such as corn, sugar cane, and palm oil:

• Algae/seaweed doesn't need soil and fresh water as other agricultural biofuel producer crops desperately do. Some critics say that the cultivation of massive agricultural crops to produce bio fuel  require very large acres of land, that makes it inefficient and potentially harm the environment.
• Algae/seaweed grow 10 times faster than sugar cane. It is the fastest growing crop.
• Because some algae/seaweed species are oil rich, the amount of oil we can collect from them is hundreds of times greater than the amount of oil that can be collected from an equal amount of a traditional, plant-based, biodiesel feedstock like soybeans.
• Algae/seaweed remove massive amounts of CO2 from the air. Algae farms are glutton eaters of CO2 gas providing a means for recycling waste CO2 from fossil fuel combustion.
• Food price will rise as the effect of more land is taken away to produce biofuel.