Advanced BioFuels USA

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest)  Though challenges remain, particularly in affordable feedstock, the US National Research Council says “Despite impressive recent and projected growth, the manufacturing of chemicals using biological synthesis and engineering could expand even faster.”

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In Washington, the National Research Council arm of the National Academies has released its report, “Industrialization of Biology: A Roadmap to Accelerate the Advanced Manufacturing of Chemicals,” including a series of goals, recommendations and conclusions to expand the use of industrial biotechnology to transform the sustainability and cost of chemical production.

In today’s Digest, we’ll feature a series of excerpts from the report,which can be downloaded free in its 144-page entirety here, and is a must-read.

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Today, “Agilent Technologies estimates that U.S. business-to-business revenues from industrial biotechnology alone reached at least $125 billion in 2012. Bio-based chemical applications accounted for about $66 billion of that activity with biofuels adding another $30 billion.”

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Although the Council forcused on a wide variety of factors and opportunities from genes all the way to product, the first challenge is sustainable, affordable, reliable, available feedstocks. As the Council observed, “Scientific and engineering challenges remain, particularly in the areas of feedstocks, enabling transformations, and the development of an integrated design toolchain…In the case of large-volume chemicals, sugar costs can represent the majority of the total product costs. In the extreme case of biofuels, sugar costs represent as much as 65 percent of the total product costs.”

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It will start with ag residues, they conclude:  “A current generation of cellulosic ethanol plants will rely on corn stover (stalks, leaves, and cobs); other sources of cellulose are available from agriculture; wheat straw, rice straw, and sugarcane bagasse are all examples.”

But rapidly focus will shift to lignin: “Lignin constitutes about 20 percent of corn stover mass. It is currently recovered and valued as a fuel. As the use of cellulosic feedstocks expands, strategies are needed to derive additional value from lignin so that it can be used as a co-product rather than a waste stream from fermentation”

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Another area of opportunity is dedicated energy crops and perennial grasses. The Council writes that although “cropping patterns change slowly,” and “It is unlikely that land used for today’s crops will be converted to production of an energy crop,” they foresee that “annual crops such as sorghum have great potential to be a future source of cellulosic feedstock. Sorghum is well adapted to the more arid conditions of the U.S. western Great Plains.  Perennial grasses…have the potential to augment biomass supply without competing for today’s agricultural land.

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In addition to unconventional gas, there are also biological sources of methane from landfill gas or the biological digestion of biomass. Methane and its derivatives such as methanol, syngas, or formate all have potential as carbon sources for fermentation.”

But they see challenges with the C1s: “Considerable technical challenges exist. Two-phase gas-liquid fermentation reactors are complex and costly. Both methane and hydrogen are sparingly soluble in aqueous media. Gas-liquid mass transfer is a significant impediment to high volumetric productivity in the fermenter. However, at least three demonstration-scale syngas-to-ethanol facilities are operating today. Additional process engineering and host organism research are needed to expand the economic viability of C1 feedstocks for the biological production of chemicals.”

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The Digest’s Take

The Council’s work is detailed and applaudable, as far as it goes. But we found the Council’s avoidance of any discussion of advanced oilseeds; algae; urban residues such as fats, oils and greases and muncipal solid waste to be a missed opportunity.

There is significant carbon available from these resources, in many cases derived from abundant materials such as CO2, sunlight and saline water; or from ultra low-cost sources such as waste collection. Already, these sources are being used at scale to make chemicals and fuels — for example, Enerkem’s commercial-scale facility in Alberta, Solazyme’s commefcial-scale production in Clinton, Iowa; and the signficant production of both biodiesel and renewable diesel by companies such as Renewable Energy Group (which recently acquired the advanced synthetic biology start-up LS9 to pursue work in areas such as chemical production).  READ MORE  Access study