Researchers from the UK Met Office have studied the benefits of various biofuel crops in models of the future global climate. They have found that the carbon that is released into the atmosphere from the loss of natural vegetation could be paid back by using miscanthus grass within 30 years.. Estimates for other biofuel crops, such as corn for ethanol, range from 167 to 420 years to pay back their carbon debt.

According to John Hughes, UK Met Office Research Scientist, "Our study demonstrates the huge potential of energy crops, in particular of Miscanthus. Also, by scaling the results up to the global scale as we do in this study we are developing a new set of tools for evaluating energy crops."

Miscanthus is a tall perennial grass tha thas been called both "elephant grass" and "E-grass". It is sometimes confused with African elephant grass (Pennisetum purpureum). The miscanthus cultivars proposed for Europe (miscanthus x giganteus) are sterile hybrids which originated in Japan.

Miscanthus can be harvested every year with a sugar cane harvester and can be grown in a cool climate like northern Europe.The harvested stems of miscanthus can be used as fuel for the production of heat and electric power as well for manufacturing bio-ethanol.

Miscanthis x giganteus

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Scientists at Arizona State University have reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science that they have genetically engineered bacteria to produce biofuel.

Researchers Xinyao Liu and Roy Curtiss have engineered cyanobacteria (blue-green algae) that continuously secret the oil. 

The scientists started by producing cyanobacteria carrying the enzyme thioesterase, that clips the bonds that bind fatty acid to more complex carrier proteins. This allowed for oil to accumulate within the microbes, to the point where it can no longer be contained.

They then modified two layers of the cyanobacteria’s cellular envelope so that the fatty acid could get out more easily. Once out, it accumulates on the surface of the bacteria’s liquid environment, where it forms an easily-harvested whitish residue.

Finally, the team added genes that caused overproduction of fatty acids, while also removing cellular pathways that weren’t essential to the microbe’s survival. The result was a cyanobacteria that devoted all its resources to oil production and basic survival.

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British Airways has unveiled plans to establish what it believes will be Europe’s first ’sustainable’ jet fuel plant

The plant will produce aviation fuel from plasma gasification of biomass into BioSynGas which is then converted into jet fuel. The facility will process all types of biomass and residue feedstock which will mainly be sourced from local waste management facilities. The process produces no waste products other than an environmentally-benign slag that can be used as construction aggregate.

It is planned that the plant will be fully operational by 2014 and, if successful, it will convert 500,000 tonnes of carbon-based material per year into 60 million litres of jet fuel. This would reduce annual carbon emissions by 145 kilotonnes.

Meanwhile, the US Air Force has said that it has been working on mass-producing jet fuel from algae for a target price of $3 a gallon (80 cents per litre).
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A research team from the Joint BioEnergy Institute and biotech firm LS9 have modified E. coli bacteria to produce biodiesel from plant sugars. The biodiesel can be transported in diesel pipelines and burned in standard diesel engines. It releases far fewer greenhouse gases than conventional fossil diesel.

E. coli was previously known to synthesize fatty acids, key ingredients in forming biofuels efficiently. But the bacterium normally manufactures only as many fatty acids as it needs to survive. The research team was able to manipulate an E. coli strain to create more fatty acids than the bacterium itself would need. When the E. coli interacted with sugar cane, it fermented the plant’s sugars and generated a surplus of fatty acids - producing biofuel straight from the biomass.

The project’s next step will be adapting the process for fibres other than sugar cane, expanding its potential feedstocks to grass or crop waste.

While other mathods of producing biodiesel require expensive chemical processes to convert biomass into fuel, the researchers believe that the use of bacteria has the potential to produce biodiesel at competitive prices within two years.

Another team of researchers, from the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science, have developed a different way of tusing bacteria to make biofuel in a reaction is powered directly by energy from sunlight.

The team has genetically modified a cyanobacterium to consume carbon dioxide and produce the isobutanol. Isobutanol holds great potential as a gasoline alternative.

The researchers genetically engineered a strain cyanobacterium (blue-green algae) that intakes carbon dioxide and sunlight and produces isobutyraldehyde gas. The low boiling point and high vapor pressure of the gas allows it to easily be stripped from the system. Inexpensive chemical catalysis are used to convert isobutyraldehyde gas to liqisobutanol,

Ideally, the new system would be installed next to an existing fossil fuel burning power plant. It would potentially consume the greenhouse gases emitted from the power plants and recycled them as liquid fuel.

(Based on sources including the journal Nature)

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A team of scientists, led by Professor Will Zimmerman from the University of Sheffield, has developed an innovative device which will make the production of alternative biofuels more energy efficient.

The team have devised an air-lift loop bioreactor in which gas microbubbles (less than 50 microns in diameter) transfer materials in the liquid in the bioreactor much more rapidly, and using much less energy, than the larger bubbles produced in conventional biorectors. Because the microbubbles are so small, they rise more slowly and smoothly. This generates much less stirring in the liquid and, consequently, wastes less energy.

Studies to date have found the microbubble technique to use 18% less energy and the researchers believe that it has the potential to revolutionise the energy-efficient production of biofuels.

The approach is currently being tested with researchers from Suprafilt in Rochdale on industrial stack gases and with Yorkshire Water who are using the microbubbles technique to give a better performance in the treatment of wastewater. They are predicting that it will reduce their current electricity costs for the process by a third.

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Aurora Biofuels, a California company, says it has cultivated a strain of algae that doubles the production of biodiesel by absorbing more than twice as much carbon dioxide as conventional strains.

Normally, algae absorb more carbon dioxide in low light and decrease the amount absorbed as the light gets brighter during the day. By a process of screening and selection, Aurora has bred a strain of algae that can ingest carbon dioxide regardless of the intensity of sunlight.

Aurora’s process uses salt water in open ponds. The algae feed on carbon dioxide and Aurora says that its algae will sequester 90 percent of the CO2 fed into their environment. It is therefore aiming to convert the carbon dioxide waste from producers, such as power utilities and cement plants, into the feedstock for biodiesel. It says that it can be price competitive with oil when it is around $US60 to $US100 a barrel.

In terms of land space, Aurora says that its algae are 25 times more productive than sugar-based fuels and 70 to 100 time more productive than agricultural crops, such as soy. In addition, algae can be grown on land which is not suitable for  crops.

The company is scaling its technology for industrial production and expects to complete an 8-hectare (20-acre) demonstration plant in 2010 and achieve full commercial production in 2012.

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Joule Biotechnologies Inc, a company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has revealed details of a process that it says can make 185,000 litres of biofuel per hectare per year. If this yield proves realistic, it could make it practical to replace all fossil fuels used for transportation with biofuels. The company also claims that the fuel can be sold for prices competitive with fossil fuels.

Joule Biotechnologies grows genetically engineered micro-organisms in specially designed photobioreactors. The micro-organisms use energy from the sun to convert carbon dioxide and water into ethanol or other hydrocarbon fuels.

The company says that while conventional, corn-based biofuels can supply only a small fraction of the United States’ fuel because of the amount of land, water and energy needed to grow the grain. The new process, because of its high yields, could supply all of the country’s transportation fuel from an area the size of the Texas panhandle.

"We think this is the first company that’s had a real solution to the concept of energy independence," says Bill Sims, CEO of Joule Biotechnologies, "and it’s ready comparatively soon."

The company plans to build a pilot-scale plant in the southwestern U.S. early next year and it expect to produce ethanol on a commercial scale by the end of 2010.

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ExxonMobil and biotech firm Synthetic Genomics have announced a new alliance to produce fuel made from photosynthetic algae. ExxonMobil expects to spend more than $600 million on the initial phase project.

Exxon Mobil’s collaboration with Synthetic Genomics will last five to six years and will involve the creation of a new test facility in San Diego. After that, ExxonMobil could invest billions of dollars more to scale up the technology and bring it to commercial production.

ExxonMobil has launched the partnership after years of being publicly opposed to investing in renewable energy. Now Emil Jacobs, Vice President of Research and Development at Exxon Mobil Research and Engineering Co says that "The world faces a significant challenge to supply the energy required for economic development and improved standards of living while managing greenhouse gas emissions and the risks of climate change".

"It’s fair to say that we looked at all the biofuels options," Jacobs said. "Algae ended up on top."

Riggs Eckelberry, president and CEO of OriginOil commented that "Algae is the feedstock to overtake petroleum. It’s the real alternative to petroleum."

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A team of engineers at Penn State University has discovered a tiny microbe which can use electricity to directly convert carbon dioxide and water to methane, producing a portable energy source with a potentially neutral carbon footprint.

Methanogenic microorganisms produce methane in marshes and dumps but scientists thought that the organisms turned hydrogen or organic materials, such as acetate, into methane. However, the researchers have now found, while trying to produce hydrogen in microbial electrolysis cells, that their cells produced much more methane than expected.

"We were studying making hydrogen in microbial electrolysis cells and we kept getting all this methane," said Bruce E. Logan, Kappe Professor of Environmental Engineering, Penn State. "We may now understand why."

Microbial electrolysis cells require an electrical voltage to be added to the voltage that is produced by bacteria using organic materials to produce current that evolves into hydrogen. The researchers found that archaea, using about the same electrical input, could use the current to convert carbon dioxide and water to methane without any organic material, bacteria or hydrogen usually found in microbial electrolysis cells. 

"We have a microbe that is self perpetuating that can accept electrons directly, and use them to create methane," said Professor Logan.

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Scientists from Montana State University have discovered that a fungus found in a Patagonian rainforest could provide an alternative source of biofuel.

The fungus, Gliocladium roseum, grows in the ulmo tree (Eucryphia cordifolia), a species native to the Patagonia region of Argentina and Chile. The researchers have found that it possesses the metabolic machinery to produce a wide variety of hydrocarbons virtually identical to the compounds in diesel obtained from crude oil.

According to the lead researcher, Professor Gary Strobel, "Many fungi make ethanol, but none to date produce this kind of mixture of diesel hydrocarbons."

The fungus produces the diesel directly from cellulose-rich products. "Cellulose is the most abundant organic substance on the planet and it mostly exists as waste material — straw, chaff, leaves, cuttings, etc.," says Professor Strobel who added that "The main value of this discovery may not be the organism itself, but the genes responsible for the production of these gases."

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