UK biofuels production collapsing in face of cheap imports, only one major producer left

Biofuels could indeed be a complementary or temporary solution to increased demand of energy and the prospect that one day (in the distant future) we will run out of fossil fuel! However, the challenges and dilemmas remain very significant not least because of global, regional, and local energy market forces and competition.

"In August, Associated British Foods (ABF) announced the closure of Vivergo, its bioethanol production plant in Hull, UK. The decision to close the site, one of just two bioethanol plants in the UK, followed failed discussions with the UK government to find a solution to enable Vivergo to operate on a profitable and sustainable basis.

The closure leaves Ensus’s Teesside plant, owned by German company CropEnergies, as the sole major producer of bioethanol in the country, although it too has warned that it might be forced to close unless the UK government takes urgent action. ..."

UK biofuels production collapsing in face of cheap imports | Business | Chemistry World

Chemistry World Daily Newsletter "Bioethanol plants closing after US tariffs removed, while biodiesel faces competition from China"

Science breakthrough using plants as biofuel without impacting food security. Really!

Biofuel has been promised several times before! Maybe this time?

However, this seems to be more of a PR article. It says little about the breakthrough itself!

"An Australian-led scientific breakthrough to increase oil yield from plants will help advance the production and use of biofuels, such as sustainable aviation fuel.

The Biomass Oil Project has been developed over a decade by scientists from Australia’s national science agency, CSIRO, and the technology has been acquired by Australian agricultural company Nufarm.  ..."

Science breakthrough using plants as biofuel without impacting food security

Science breakthrough using plants as fuel without impacting food security (original article) "A breakthrough more than a decade in the making, makes use of a plant’s leaves and stems to create oil, which has the potential to be used as a new global energy source."

Lignin breakthrough unlocks cost-competitive, carbon-neutral jet fuel

Human ingenuity trumps the Global Warming hoax and Climate Change religion anytime! The study was already published in December 2023.

Farming of biofuels is more and more becoming a reality and could replace fossil fuels one day.

"... It's distinct from biofuel, in that second-generation SAF doesn't use corn, sugar cane, soy or other food crops. That's a heinous waste of land and water. Instead, feedstocks like wood residues from milling operations, sugarcane bagasse, corn stover and other cheap, abundant waste products are used. ..."

"When it comes to making fuel from plants, the first step has always been the hardest — breaking down the plant matter. A new study finds that introducing a simple, renewable chemical to the pretreatment step can finally make next-generation biofuel production both cost-effective and carbon neutral.  ...

To overcome the lignin hurdle, ... invented CELF, which stands for co-solvent enhanced lignocellulosic fractionation. It is an innovative biomass pretreatment technology.

“CELF uses tetrahydrofuran or THF to supplement water and dilute acid during biomass pretreatment. It improves overall efficiency and adds lignin extraction capabilities,” ... “Best of all, THF itself can be made from biomass sugars.” ..."

From the abstract:

"Harnessing the natural diversity of plant biomass for producing economically and environmentally sustainable liquid fuels and high-value co-products entails the strategic integration of different technologies, each finely tuned for a unique biomass intermediate, to realize greater synergies in a co-processing schema known as biorefining. Presented here is a techno-economic and life cycle analysis of a hybrid biorefinery strategy that integrates several leading biochemical and catalytic processes to maximize the utilization of lignocellulosic biomass and produce commercially relevant biofuels and bioproducts. High fidelity computer models were assembled to evaluate the impact of feedstock and co-product selection on overall economics and global warming potential of the biorefinery. Central to this biorefinery model is the application of mild co-solvent enhanced lignocellulosic fractionation (CELF) pretreatment as the first step to non-destructively fractionate biomass into clean hemicellulose sugars, cellulose, and lignin intermediates that are funneled to a suite of downstream conversion technologies to yield alcohols, esters, carboxylic acids, and hydrocarbons as co-products. A multiparametric analysis of different process modalities using deterministic evaluation of experimental data and sensitivity analyses reveal the advantages of selecting a feedstock with higher carbon content (poplar wood instead of corn stover), the benefits of selecting a fuel alcohol product with higher yield and titer (ethanol instead of isobutanol) and the outcomes of selecting lignin fate (valorization vs. combustion). The application of supercritical methanol and a copper porous metal oxide catalyst to convert lignin to cyclic hydrocarbons, a component of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF), presents mixed outcomes: while this operation further improves carbon recovery from biomass, its inclusion in the biorefinery leads to a carbon footprint penalty in view of the use of methanol for lignin depolymerization. Nevertheless, the CELF biorefinery model demonstrated a possibility of supplying SAF to the market at competitive prices – as low as $3.15 per GGE (gallon of gasoline equivalent) – as well as carboxylic acids and esters."

Lignin breakthrough unlocks cost-competitive, carbon-neutral jet fuel A simple, cheap pretreatment promises to radically cut the price of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) made from waste wood biomass – potentially making it cost-competitive with fossil-based jet fuel, while cutting down emissions by up to 80%.

Inexpensive, carbon-neutral biofuels are finally possible (UC Riverside)

Economics and global warming potential of a commercial-scale delignifying biorefinery based on co-solvent enhanced lignocellulosic fractionation to produce alcohols, sustainable aviation fuels, and co-products from biomass (open access)

Fig. 1 Simplified diagram for the proposed CELF-based biorefineries outlining the mass integration strategy. CELF: co-solvent enhanced lignocellulosic fractionation.

Bacteria Used To Make Supercharged Rocket Biofuel

Who needs fossil fuels anymore when you have bacteria producing powerful fuels!

What else can bacteria produce for us? The limit is your imagination!

"... a group of biofuel experts led by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) took inspiration from an extraordinary antifungal molecule made by Streptomyces bacteria to develop a totally new type of fuel that has projected energy density greater than the most advanced heavy-duty fuels used today, including the rocket fuels used by NASA. ...
The incredible energy potential of these fuel candidate molecules, called POP-FAMEs (for polycylcopropanated fatty acid methyl esters), comes from the fundamental chemistry of their structures. Polycylcopropanated molecules contain multiple triangle-shaped three-carbon rings that force each carbon-carbon bond into a sharp 60-degree angle. The potential energy in this strained bond translates into more energy for combustion than can be achieved with the larger ring structures or carbon-carbon chains typically found in fuels. In addition, these structures enable fuel molecules to pack tightly together in a small volume, increasing the mass – and therefore the total energy – of fuel that fits in any given tank. ..."

From the abstract:

"Cyclopropane-functionalized hydrocarbons are excellent fuels due their high energy density. However, the organic synthesis of these molecules is challenging. In this work, we produced polycyclopropanated fatty acids in bacteria. These molecules can be converted into renewable fuels for energy-demanding applications such as shipping, long-haul transport, aviation, and rocketry. We explored the chemical diversity encoded in thousands of bacterial genomes to identify and repurpose naturally occurring cyclopropanated molecules. We identified a set of candidate iterative polyketide synthases (iPKSs) predicted to produce polycyclopropanated fatty acids (POP-FAs), expressed them in Streptomyces coelicolor, and produced POP-FAs. We determined the structure of the molecules and increased their production 22-fold. Finally, we produced polycyclopropanated fatty acid methyl esters (POP-FAMEs). Our POP fuel candidates can have net heating values of more than 50 MJ/L. ..."

Bacteria Used To Make Supercharged Rocket Biofuel | Technology Networks

Bacteria for Blastoff: Using Microbes to Make Supercharged New Rocket Fuel

Biosynthesis of polycyclopropanated high energy biofuels (open access)

AI-Directed Algae Blooms Boost Biofuel Prospects

Good news! Very clever! Whether fossil or bio fuels, the age of carbon based energy is far from over!

As if we needed carbon capture for a trace gas in the atmosphere, but if it soothes climate change demagogues why not! This would be a nice carbon cycle in and out of the atmosphere.

"... By using machine learning to precisely tune the growth of blue-green algae, also known as cyanobacteria, the Texas A&M University team is able to produce over 43 grams per square meter a day in an outdoor experimental setup. That’s about twice the 25 grams/m2/day target recently released by the U.S. Department of Energy. ...

The new high yield would bring the algae selling price to US $309 per tonne ($281 per tonne), less than a quarter of the selling price of algae cultivated in 2019 using state-of-the-art open-pond methods. ... estimates that ... process has the potential to bring the algal biofuel price to below $5 per gallon ($1.32 per liter) ...
That's slightly higher than corn ethanol, which is $2 to $4 per gallon (53 cents to $1.06 per liter) ...
The researchers also found a way to make harvesting faster and cheaper. They engineered the algae to produce a chemical called limonene that makes the surface of the cells water-repellent. As a result, the cells try to get away from water and cluster together, eventually getting heavy enough to settle down at the bottom of the vessel and making them easier to remove. ..."

From the abstract:

"Algal biofuel is regarded as one of the ultimate solutions for renewable energy, but its commercialization is hindered by growth limitations caused by mutual shading and high harvest costs. We overcome these challenges by advancing machine learning to inform the design of a semi-continuous algal cultivation (SAC) to sustain optimal cell growth and minimize mutual shading. An aggregation-based sedimentation (ABS) strategy is then designed to achieve low-cost biomass harvesting and economical SAC. ..."

AI-Directed Algae Blooms Boost Biofuel Prospects - IEEE Spectrum The slimy stuff is looking better for carbon capture, too

Machine learning-informed and synthetic biology-enabled semi-continuous algal cultivation to unleash renewable fuel productivity (open access)

Bacteria may hold key for energy storage, biofuels

Recommendable! This actually suggest we can recycle carbon dioxide from the air to biofuels to carbon dioxide, repeat!

However, the underlying research article does not really address the issue of biofuels!

"... How to build a low-cost, environmentally friendly and large-scale system for storing and retrieving energy from renewable sources such as wind and solar. Currently, there are no sustainable methods for storing green energy, as batteries are environmentally toxic.
The answer ... a bacteria called Shewanella oneidensis. The microbe takes electrons into its metabolism, and uses the energy to make essential precursors for ‘fixing’ carbon, which occurs when plants or organisms take carbon from CO2 and add it to an organic molecule, usually a sugar. ... engineering a new bacteria that goes a step further by using those precursor molecules to make organic molecules, such as biofuels. ..."

"Extracellular electron transfer (EET) could enable electron uptake into microbial metabolism for the synthesis of complex, energy dense organic molecules from CO2 and renewable electricity ...
Knockout of each gene eliminates extracellular electron uptake, yet in four of the five cases produces no significant defect in electron donation to an anode. This result highlights both distinct electron uptake components and an electronic connection between aerobic and anaerobic electron transport chains that allow electrons from the reversible EET machinery to be coupled to different respiratory processes in S. oneidensis. Homologs to these genes across many different genera suggesting that electron uptake by EET coupled to respiration could be widespread. ..."

Bacteria may hold key for energy storage, biofuels | Cornell Chronicle

Identification of a pathway for electron uptake in Shewanella oneidensis (public access)

Looks simple? 😉

Endless Supply Of Biofuels Imminent?

Posted: 1/21/2019

Today, I read another article that describes scientific work leading to progress on programming plants to produce biofuels: How a Molecular Signal Helps Plant Cells Decide When to Make Oil Details of mechanism suggest new strategy for engineering plants to make more oil

I would estimate that within the next 5-10 years we are capable to produce any amount of biofuels.