Advanced BioFuels USA

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest) … Simulation data from Sandia suggests “that POP fuel candidates are safe and stable at room temperature and will have energy density values of more than 50 megajoules per liter after chemical processing.

That’s 56 percent more energy than gasoline, per gallon. 43 percent better than kerosene.

And there’s the rub. No one begrudges the consumer a shot at a POP fuel that would provide as much as 56 percent more range per fill up. That’s a lot of help for pain at the pump.

But….there’s a big but.

This fuel is even 25 percent more energy-dense than J-10, used for missile fuel and costing the military something like $25 per gallon because that thrust is so highly valued.

You Will Never See this Fuel at the Service Station – Here’s Why

Who’s up for some eco-friendly space travel? asks Berkeley Lab’s Aliyah Kovner. It conjures up a sweet vision of low-carbon transit to Mars. Worth noting that Mars if the God of War, and for sure the military will gobble up all the fuel ever produced via this pathway for a long, long time.

Here’s the need to know, in practical terms. North Korea’s Hwasong-14 missile has a potential range of 8,000km, according to this BBC report.

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 And if you’ve noticed that filling a Hwasong-14 missile with a POP fuel gives it a range to hit almost any target in the eastern two-thirds of the United States and most of Europe. According to the BBC, some studies have concluded that the Hwasong-14 could reach a range of 12,500 kilometers with maximum trajectory and POP fuels, which brings all of the US and Europe into range. And that, in a nutshell, is the primary reason you may never see a POP fuel anywhere near a commodity market, ever. This class of biofuels screams “classified”.

Why don’t US and other countries simply make these molecules from petroleum?

Um, you can’t, actually, by any known process or even dreamed-of process.

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What are they?

In a nutshell, they are polycylcopropanated molecules that, as Berkeley Lab explains, “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.”

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Fortunately, one of the molecules had been studied and genetically analyzed due to interest in its antifungal properties. Discovered in 1990, the natural product is named jawsamycin.”

From there, they’ve been working to engineer the organism to produce the molecules in relevant titers and yields.

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In the end, they’ve produced fatty acids with up to seven cyclopropane rings on a carbon chassis — once extra transesterification-like step converts the molecules to fuels.

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“The larger consortium behind this work, Co-Optima, was funded to think about not just recreating the same fuels from biobased feedstocks, but how we can make new fuels with better properties,” said Sundstrom ( Advanced Biofuels and Bioproducts Process Development Unit researcher Eric Sundstrom). “The question that led to this is: ‘What kinds of interesting structures can biology make that petrochemistry can’t make?’”

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“We’re working on tuning the chain length to target specific applications,” said Sundstrom. “Longer chain fuels would be solids, well-suited to certain rocket fuel applications, shorter chains might be better for jet fuel, and in the middle might be a diesel-alternative molecule.”

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 “As these fuels would be produced from bacteria fed with plant matter – which is made from carbon dioxide pulled from the atmosphere – burning them in engines will significantly reduce the amount of added greenhouse gas relative to any fuel generated from petroleum.” (JBEI chief Jay Keasling)

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To remove the oxygen, or not?

For missile fuel, by all means remove the oxygen, it’s dead weight given that the fuel can combust using atmospheric oxygen. But, maybe we should hold off de-oxygenating a rocket fuel. Out there in space, oxygen is not dead weight, in fact (like guys going to the summit of Everest) you have to carry it with you. The heaviest thing going to the Moon is the oxygen. So, when you have a high-performing molecule and some oxygen already in tow, perhaps leaving better alone is a good idea. Or, at least measuring the fuel efficiency in the full context of combustion in a vacuum. The presence of oxygen in ethanol is a primary reason it was admired by Werner von Braun as a rocket fuel.  READ MORE

Biosynthesis of polycyclopropanated high energy biofuels (Joule)

Bacteria for Blastoff: Using Microbes to Make Supercharged New Rocket Fuel: Scientists have developed a new class of energy-dense biofuels based on one of nature’s most unique molecules (Berkeley Lab)