Bacteria Delivers "Buck-A-Gallon" Biofuel Solution

As syngas fermentation leads to lower ethanol concentrations than corn fermentations, the energy and cost to separate the ethanol from water is proportionally higher. To reduce this differential, Coskata has exclusively licensed membrane separation technology to reduce the energy requirements by over 50%. The vapor permeation process is amenable to separating ethanol from biofermentation broth because of the very low solids content of the broth relative to other fermentation processes. Image Credit: Coskata

Bacteria Delivers "Buck-A-Gallon" Biofuel Solution (two approaches)

There was a time one could buy fuel for ones car or truck for a “Buck-A-Gallon" … and it is a past we can embrace right now … TODAY!

Well, at least General Motors seems to think so with its investment in Biofuel processing startup Coskata.

The key to the conversion approach Coskata has perfected uses bacteria to break down the broad array of organic waste (switch grasses, twigs, corn husks, leaves, landscape waste, and other non-food sources of organic material) and make Ethanol for a fuel mix or replacement.

After the carbon-hydrogen bonds in the feedstock are "cracked" using gasification and converted into syngas, bacterial fermentation (biofermentation) of the syngas into ethanol occurs using proprietary Coskata microorganisms. Image Credit: Coskata

The real kicker is that this process not only protects our current food paradigm built upon corn for feed and food, the process uses far less petroleum fuel (about 13% as opposed to 77% - or 17 times more efficient) and water while greatly increasing the productive output per bale of feedstock in order to create a gallon of this cleaner burning substance here on the Oblate Spheroid.

Design engineer Mike Sura adjusts settings on Coskata's 150L bioreactor to make ethanol. Image Credit: Tyler Mallory/General Motors

This excerpted from WIRED -

Startup Says It Can Make Ethanol for $1 a Gallon, and Without Corn
By Chuck Squatriglia - 01.24.08 1:00 PM

A biofuel startup in Illinois can make ethanol from just about anything organic for less than $1 per gallon, and it wouldn't interfere with food supplies, company officials said.

Coskata, which is backed by General Motors and other investors, uses bacteria to convert almost any organic material, from corn husks (but not the corn itself) to municipal trash, into ethanol.

"It's not five years away, it's not 10 years away. It's affordable, and it's now," said Wes Bolsen, the company's vice president of business development.

The discovery underscores the rapid innovation under way in the race to make cellulosic ethanol cheaply. With the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 requiring an almost five-fold increase in ethanol production to 36 billion gallons annually by 2022, scientists are working quickly to reach that breakthrough.
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Besides cutting production costs to fire sale prices, the process avoids some key drawbacks of making ethanol from corn, company officials said. It wouldn't impact the food supply, and its net energy balance is high because the technique works almost anywhere using almost anything with great efficiency. The end result will be E85 sold at the pump for about a dollar cheaper per gallon than gasoline, according to the company.

Coskata won't have a pilot plant running until this time next year, and it will produce just 40,000 gallons a year. Still, several experts said Coskata shows enough promise to leave them cautiously optimistic.
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Coskata uses existing gasification technology to convert almost any organic material into synthesis gas, which is a mix of carbon monoxide and hydrogen. Rather than fermenting that gas or using thermo-chemical catalysts to produce ethanol, Coskata pumps it into a reactor containing bacteria that consume the gas and excrete ethanol. Richard Tobey, Coskata's vice president of engineering, says the process yields 99.7 percent pure ethanol.

Image Credit: Coskata

Gasification and bacterial conversion are common methods of producing ethanol, but biofuel experts said Coskata is the first to combine them. Doing so, they said, merges the feedstock flexibility of gasification with the relatively low cost of bacterial conversion.
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Coskata's method generates more ethanol per ton of feedstock than corn-based ethanol and requires far less water, heat and pressure. Those cost savings allow it to turn, say, two bales of hay into five gallons of ethanol for less than $1 a gallon, the company said. Corn-based ethanol costs $1.40 a gallon to produce, according to the Renewable Fuels Association.
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May Wu, an environmental scientist at Argonne National Laboratory, says Coskata's ethanol produces 84 percent less greenhouse gas than fossil fuel even after accounting for the energy needed to produce and transport the feedstock. It also generates 7.7 times more energy than is required to produce it. Corn ethanol typically generates 1.3 times more energy than is used producing it.
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Making ethanol is one thing, but there's almost no infrastructure in place for distributing it. But the company's method solves that problem because ethanol could be made locally from whatever feedstock is available, Tobey said.

"You're not bound by location," he said. "If you're in Orange County, you can use municipal waste. If you're in the Pacific Northwest, you can use wood waste. Florida has sugar. The Midwest has corn. Each region has been blessed with the ability to grow its own biomass."
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"Even if you produce it county by county, you still need an infrastructure," he said. "People aren't going to go to some remote location for fuel."
Reference Here>>

The Biodesign Institute of Arizona State University - Alternative Engergy
(click image to launch video)

The biofuel developed for ASU's "Tubes in the Desert" project avoids many of the downsides presented by biofuels such as corn, cellulose or other crops/plants. Because it uses a microscopic bacteria as the fuel source, it doesn't compete with food crops and could yield a much larger amount of fuel per acre. The bacteria are grown in transparent tubes, hence the name. /// ASU researchers are also exploring the possibilities of microbial fuel cells -- tiny microbes that generate energy by feeding on waste. /// Guest interviews include: Neal Woodbury, Ph.D., the Biodesign Institute; Wim Vermaas, Professor, ASU School of Life Sciences. /// Learn More: Visit http://www.azpbs.org/asuspotlight
(ht: MAXINE)

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The "Other White Meat" Of The Auto-Fuel World

Phill - The world's first appliance that lets you refuel your Natural Gas Vehicle indoors or outdoors from your household natural gas line! - Image Credit: FuelMaker Corporation

The "Other White Meat" Of The Auto-Fuel World

That's right, there is another fuel alternative that would allow all of us to become less dependent on foreign sources for fuel in our automobiles and this one gets very little respect.

Just as in Pork having to advertise that it is the other white meat in order to get attention … Natural Gas should launch a similar campaign.

Almost everyone is aware of E85 Ethanol as THE fuel alternative of the future, but Natural Gas should also be considered into the calculation. It's cheap, it's plentiful, it's produced locally, and the infrastructure is almost all in place for those who do not mind a little planning.

For example, only three E85 re-fueling stations exist in California (and only one of those is available to the general public) whereas there are over 200 Natural Gas stations open for general public use with another 50 under construction.

And now, with "Phill" in you garage, you will have a Natural Gas station to get any trip started.

Excerpts from USA TODAY -

Natural-gas powered cars: Who even knows they exist?
By Chris Woodyard, USA TODAY - LOS ANGELES - May 09, 2007

Imagine paying as little as $1.25 a gallon to run your car.

Not for gasoline. Instead, you would pump a fuel that's readily available, North American-produced and virtually pollution-free. Many motorists could even fill up in their own garages every night just like they would power-up with one of the gas-electric plug-in hybrids still under development.

Now, what if this magical car were available today, and no one cared. Not government officials. Not auto executives. Not consumers. Not even some environmentalists.

Therein lies the paradox of the natural-gas powered car. Most major automakers offered them in the 1990s, primarily for government and corporate fleets. Back then, smog was the chief national concern. Yet today, when natural gas offers a common-sense, immediate and ecological relief valve to the nation's dependence on foreign oil, only one major automaker still makes a production model — and sales stink.

Only about 1,000 of the more than 300,000 Civic subcompacts that Honda (HMC) sells every year in the USA are the natural-gas GX version. Most still go to corporate or government fleets. Consumers can buy them only through select dealers in California and New York.

Some natural-gas proponents quietly seethe. They feel natural gas is being overlooked for cars, pickups and SUVs at a time when the nation's energy supply is dwindling and gasoline prices stair-step ever upward.

"It's like shouting in the wind sometimes," says Ron Cogan, publisher of the Green Car Journal and a big believer in natural gas. "It seems crazy we are not exploring more natural-gas vehicles, because the technology is here."

Natural-gas cars have some significant drawbacks. There aren't enough stations selling natural gas to make them practical for cross-country drives. They don't have as much driving range as gasoline-powered cars. And their fuel tanks take up more space in the trunk of the cars.

But every alternative-energy vehicle has disadvantages.
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Ethanol vs. natural gas for cars

E85 is backed in farm states because its 85% ethanol content is made from corn. But ethanol is heavily subsidized by the government. And it, too, is available at a limited number of stations — 1,200 at present — mostly in the Midwest. Ethanol's growing popularity threatens to drive up food prices even as farmers finish planting the most acreage in corn since 1944.

Automakers and government agencies are pouring billions into development of hydrogen-powered vehicles. But ironically, the vast majority of hydrogen made in the USA right now is derived from converting natural gas.

Advocates call compressed natural gas, or CNG for short, one of the nation's best-kept secrets when it comes to powering cars. "It bugs the hell out of me" that more isn't being done to get the word out, says Mike Eaves of the California Natural Gas Vehicle Coalition.

Natural gas is:

•Cheap. In Los Angeles this week, one chain was charging $2.55 for the natural-gas equivalent of a gallon of gasoline. By comparison, self-serve regular gasoline was hitting records, averaging $3.49 a gallon Tuesday in L.A. and California as a whole, said AAA's daily Fuel Gauge Report. California currently has the nation's highest fuel prices.

Steve Ellis, alternative fuels manager for Honda's U.S. operation, says he has never heard of an instance in which natural-gas prices exceeded those of gasoline.

With a home unit made by a company called FuelMaker, refilling a car overnight from a home's own natural-gas supply can drop the price even more. In California right now, the price equates to about $1.25 in natural gas for the equivalent gallon of gasoline.

The home unit, called Phill, mounts on a garage wall and is about the size of an old pay telephone. It costs about $3,900, but is eligible for a $1,000 federal tax credit and, at least in Southern California, another $2,000 in local incentives.

Honda GX starts at $24,590 and is eligible for a $4,000 federal tax credit. It compares feature-wise to a midlevel, gasoline-powered $17,760 Civic LX. The 2007 natural-gas GX is government rated at 28 miles a gallon in the city, 39 on the highway.
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•Plentiful. While natural gas isn't renewable like ethanol, there's lots of it. Reserves point to at least a 60-year supply, says the Natural Gas Supply Association. Only 56% of crude oil for U.S. refineries comes from North America, compared with 98% of the natural gas consumed. About half of all American homes are equipped for natural gas.

•Environmentally friendly. Natural gas creates so few emissions that Civic GX is the cleanest internal-combustion powered car on the road. It's greener than a Toyota Prius gasoline-electric hybrid and tied with the Civic hybrid, according to the Energy Department rankings for 2007 models.

Prius and the two Civics are the only vehicles clean enough to qualify for stickers that allow solo drivers to take them in California's car pool lanes. But the allotment of stickers has run out for the hybrids. Only Civic GX can still receive one.

Ellis says that on a smoggy day, the GX's exhaust is cleaner than the polluted air its engine sucks in. Natural gas is more than 20% better for carbon dioxide emissions, blamed for climate change, than comparable gasoline engines.

•Ready to go. Other major automakers sell natural-gas-powered cars in Europe, Asia, South America and elsewhere, just not in the USA. General Motors CEO Rick Wagoner mentioned natural gas at a Switzerland auto show in March as one of the alternative fuels the automaker has intensified efforts to develop for foreign markets.

About 1,500 fueling stations nationwide
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Natural gas is held back by the limited but growing number of fueling stations. Nationwide, there are about 1,500 natural-gas vehicle stations, about half of which sell to the public.
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The auto industry's past interest was driven primarily by the need to try to fulfill government requirements at the time designed to spur development of clean alternative energy. Automakers saw interest fall apart when rules were modified to allow government fleet operators to switch from natural gas to flex-fuel vehicles, which burn either E85 ethanol or regular gasoline.

Ford Motor (F) phased out natural gas pickups and vans after the 2004 model year, but it still does after-sales CNG conversions in India. GM (GM) stopped sales in the USA as well.

"The (sales) volume went down every year," GM spokeswoman Nancy Libby says. "Even when Ford and Chrysler stopped making natural-gas vehicles before us, it didn't change that fact."

That was before the advent of home fueling. It was also ahead of the soaring gasoline prices of the last couple of years and President Bush's call for a 20% reduction in gasoline use.
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"CNG faces the same challenges as hydrogen but without the benefits of zero emissions," says DaimlerChrysler spokesman Nick Cappa. Chrysler stopped making natural-gas-powered cars for U.S. sales in 1996 and has no immediate plans to sell hydrogen-powered vehicles, still in development.
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Honda deserves credit for continuing to market a natural-gas car, says Tim Carmichael, president of the Coalition for Clean Air, a California environmental-advocacy group. But consumers are still largely unaware of it, and the heavy-vehicle market holds more potential. Even a major oil executive whose company is involved in natural gas isn't enthusiastic. "It's going to require some sort of incentive before people go for it," says Shell Oil President John Hofmeister.

It didn't require much of an incentive, however, for 2003 Civic GX owner Jeff Church, 51, an airline pilot who lives in San Dimas, Calif. He says his natural-gas car, which he has driven about 53,000 miles, saves him a bundle. He estimates his home fueling unit delivers natural gas as cheap as 98 cents a gallon. The even bigger incentive is his car pool lane sticker, which allows him save 15 to 50 minutes zipping 42 miles from home to work at Los Angeles International Airport.

"For a lot of miles, it's the ideal vehicle," he says.
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Brazil On Collision Course: Ethanol & Environment

Deforestation in Brazil: This image of the southern Amazon uses satellite data from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on the Terra satellite collected in 2000 and 2001 to classify the terrain into three separate land surface categories: forest (red), herbaceous (non-woody) vegetation like grasses (green), and bare ground (blue). The Amazon’s numerous rivers appear white. Image Credit: Mongabay.com

Brazil On Collision Course: Ethanol & Environment

Ethanol production, "the renewable fuel resource", requires fiber (lots of fibre) and water (lots of water) to become the bio-replacement fuel of the future. If Brazil has its way, it plans to expand its capacity to produce Ethanol by 12 times over the next eighteen years and eclipse all other nations ability to supply the world demand for energy based on something other than petroleum.

This expansion is expected to place additional stresses on the ecosystems that surround the populated portions of Brazil. The decades old practice of slash & burn clear-cutting of the forests may now come full circle to slash & convert putting any vegetation on the production line for Ethanol.

Wither the land is cleared for sugarcane or just being cleared for the fibre due to advances in technology to convert more types of fibre ... rain forests are at a greater risk over the next 20 years.

Excerpts from Tierramérica via Inter Press Service News Agency -

Brazil Aims to Dominate World Ethanol Market
Mario Osava - Tierramérica network (Tierramérica is a specialised news service produced by IPS with the backing of the United Nations Development Programme and the United Nations Environment Programme.)

RIO DE JANEIRO, Mar 31 (Tierramérica) - Brazil is working towards producing enough ethanol to substitute 10 percent of the gasoline consumed worldwide within 18 years. That would mean increasing its current production of 17.3 billion litres a year by a factor of 12, without sacrificing forests, protected areas or food cultivation.

The government called on a group of experts to study the possibilities and impacts of a sharp increase in fuel alcohol production from sugarcane.

The group led by the Interdisciplinary Group for Energy Planning of Campinas University, and coordinated by physicist Rogério Cerqueira Leite, concluded that Brazil could produce 205 billion litres of ethanol by 2025. A comparable volume will be produced by the rest of the world, predict experts.
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Increased ethanol production is essential. The experts' report says there will be a 40-percent hike in output per hectare of sugarcane through a new technology based on hydrolysis. The United States and Brazil agreed to cooperate in developing this approach during the Mar. 8-9 visit by President George W. Bush in Sao Paulo.

Potentially, hydrolysis, which can take advantage of any cellulose material, could double productivity, but the goal was set at 40 percent based on known technologies and because part of the sugarcane waste (pulp and straw) is used in generating electricity, not ethanol, explained Carlos Rossell, a researcher with the group.

Rainforest cleared for maize - Location: Puerto Maldanado - Image Credit: Mongabay.com

This technology involves some complicated challenges, such as breaking down very tough plant structures, which will require a great deal of effort to make it viable on an industrial scale, Rossell told Tierramérica.

U.S. and European scientists are farther along in this research and benefit from much bigger investments, but Brazil has the advantage of the immediate availability of the sugarcane, ready to be processed. The others will have to go into the fields to bring in the stalks and other bio-material, mostly from maize, with additional costs, he said.

For the same reason, the expertise that can come from the United States, whose ethanol production is based on corn, doesn't resolve the Brazilian problem. The raw materials are different, the researcher said.
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For now, the United States produces a little more ethanol than Brazil does, but production costs are 40 percent higher, according to industry leaders in Brazil. The U.S. tariff barrier of 54 cents on the dollar per gallon (3.8 litres) did not prevent the northern giant from importing 1.6 billion litres of Brazilian fuel alcohol last year, when increased demand drove up maize prices.

In addition to destabilising the international market, increasing maize prices and soybean prices (the former's replacement for animal feed), U.S. ethanol is hardly environmentally efficient.

Each unit of energy used in U.S. ethanol production generates just 1.3 to 1.8 units of renewable energy, while sugarcane reaches a minimum of 8.3 units. As such, U.S.-produced ethanol does little to curb emissions that cause climate change, which, along with high-priced petroleum are the main reasons biofuels are being promoted.

In Brazil, ethanol also faces limitations. Peasant farmer movements and many social activists condemn the growth of agro-energy that hurts food production. Environmentalists fear further expansion of the farm frontier into Amazon forests, especially as land prices increase.

Fuel alcohol production has "negative environmental, social and economic impacts for the communities," it generates few jobs, and "consumes a lot of natural resources -- each litre of ethanol requires 30 litres of water," criticises Temístocles Marcelos, environmental policy director at the labour union CUT.

Virtually all forest clearing, by small farmer and plantation owner alike, is done by fire. Though these fires are intended to burn only limited areas, they frequently escape agricultural plots and pastures and char pristine rainforest. Image Credit: Mongabay.com
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The experts' study, however, points to the creation of five million new jobs if the ambitious production plan is implemented.
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In Sao Paulo state, home to more than half of Brazil's ethanol production, 60 percent of the sugarcane fields are burned in order to facilitate cutting, polluting the air and causing a number of illnesses. The sugarcane industrialists are also accused of subjecting their workers to unhealthy and exhausting work conditions, which, according to reports, have also led to death.
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The burns are also legal, and are to be abolished by 2020, he said. The solution would be accelerated if cellulose ethanol production were further advanced, because it uses sugarcane leaves.

Furthermore, ethanol benefits all of humanity by reducing carbon dioxide emissions. Its incorporation into Brazil's national energy matrix and its international marketing -- which should be unrelated to that of petroleum -- "depends only on political will," said Ribeiro.
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