Biofuel Options

At first they were heralded as the ideal replacement for fossil fuels in our collective, multi-discipline effort to curb climate change. Then, certain types of biofuels were found to produce even more carbon and public and expert opinion became divided on the topic. There are many biofuel options out there and while they can be instrumental in reducing carbon emissions, each biofuel option should be looked at individually as there are huge differences in the way they are produced.

Currently there are several biofuel options. One of them is based on crops high in sugar (sugar cane, sugar beet and sweet sorghum), or starch (corn, maize) and then use yeast fermentation to produce ethyl alcohol (ethanol). Another biofuel option is to grow plants that contain high amounts of vegetable oil, such as oil palm, soybean, algae, jatropha, or pongamia pinnata. When these oils are heated, their viscosity is reduced, and they can be burned directly in a diesel engine, or they can be chemically processed to produce fuels such as biodiesel. Wood and its byproducts can also be converted into biofuels such as woodgas, methanol or ethanol fuel. It is also possible to make cellulosic ethanol from non-edible plant parts, but this can be difficult to accomplish economically.

Production methodology is crucial when assessing what are the best biofuel options. According to the UN Environment Programme, �the way in which biofuels are produced matters in determining whether they are leading to more or less greenhouse gas emissions�. The UN body cited the case of Brazil�s sugarcane ethanol as a positive one and the case of oil palms grown in deforested tropical peatlands as a negative counterpart. The latter can be responsible for a rise in greenhouse gas emissions of up to 2,000 percent compared with fossil fuels, as a result of carbon releases from the soil.

As technologies evolve and merge, several other biofuel options will be explored and made viable. One recent example is the joint venture between Massachusetts-based Qteros and Israeli commodities recycler Applied CleanTech (ACT) who joined forces to demonstrate the commercial viability of making ethanol from liquid municipal waste. ACT�s technology extracts certain materials from the waste, including cellulose and oil, and creates solid pellets, which could potentially be combusted to produce electricity, used as pulp to produce paper, and used as feedstock for ethanol. However, ACT lacked a process to use those pellets to produce ethanol. Enter Qteros with its microbes that convert cellulosic material into ethanol in a single-step process that takes about four days and you get an exciting combination of technologies that could result in a hitherto unviable biofuel option.