Next-generation biofuels: nearly identical to gasoline and diesel
Fri, Apr 10 2009
The biofuel industry has had a bumpy few years: Ethanol is
still a Department of Energy golden child, but recent
studies raise serious questions about its viability.
Production could eat up half of America’s corn crop this
year, potentially causing food shortages, and some say that
ethanol manufacturing uses more energy than it produces.
What’s more, the fuel’s corrosiveness makes it unsuitable
for distribution via existing petroleum pipelines. But two
new biotech companies believe biofuels can leapfrog past
these problems, and they’re each engineering fuels that are
virtually identical to the gasoline and diesel we use today.
“We said, ‘What does nature make that looks like a fuel?’”
explains Kinkead Reiling, cofounder of Amyris
Biotechnologies in Emeryville, California. Every living
organism efficiently converts sugar from food into fat to
store energy, and fats are chemically similar to the
hydrocarbons that make up fuels. So by tinkering with a few
genes, scientists at Amyris and San Carlos, California,
biotech firm LS9 have designed bacteria that eat almost any
type of plant—mostly sugarcane, corn, and other forms of
cellulose—digest it, and convert it into “fuel."
The companies’ plans are feasible because of how quickly and
cheaply scientists can now sequence and synthesize genes. It
took thirteen years and $3 billion to order the first human
genome, but last year, Nobel Laureate James Watson had his
own sequenced in two months for less than $1 million. Amyris
and LS9 isolated and arranged the genes necessary to make
petroleum-like fuels in 2005 and 2007, respectively, and
introduced those genes into bacteria, creating billions of
live biofuel factories for a fraction of what it would have
cost five years earlier. “Because we have this genetic
control over the organisms, we can really tailor the set of
molecules that come out the other side,” says Greg Pal,
LS9’s senior director of corporate development.
Amyris and LS9 are producing fuels that are slightly
different from one another. Amyris is making gasoline and
diesel similar enough to conventional forms that they can be
pumped through existing pipelines and directly into cars. In
doing so, the company, which raised $20 million in 2006 and
another $70 million last year, could bypass one of biofuel’s
biggest problems in the short term: distribution.
Whereas Amyris is creating a product similar to conventional
refined fuels, LS9 is touting the real deal. “If you took
all the constraints off, what would you make?” Pal asks. The
answer: crude oil. LS9, which secured $15 million in phase
two funding last year and was recognized by the World
Economic Forum as one of the 39 Technology Pioneers of 2008,
is engineering bacteria to make crude that can be shipped
directly to refineries.
Conventional crude oil can contain thousands of types of
molecules—that’s why it’s called “crude”—but LS9’s will have
only about ten, which Pal says is ideal: The company’s oil
will have the molecular diversity necessary to make a number
of fuels and petroleum products but will be free of unwanted
chemicals that can muck up engines. It’s “a pretty optimal
solution,” he says.
The magic year for both companies is 2011, when LS9 expects
its crude oil to be in full-scale production, and Amyris’
diesel, which solidifies at a lower temperature than
vegetable-oil biodiesel, should come to market, too. Amyris’
jet fuel and gasoline and an LS9 biodiesel will follow
several years later.
What’s so green about fuels practically identical to
conventional ones? The answer lies in how they’re made.
These newer biodiesels start out as plants that suck carbon
dioxide out of the air, so burning them releases little, if
any, net CO2—it’s a closed loop, Pal argues. LS9 estimates
that its bacteria produce 90 BTUs of fuel for every 100 BTUs
of sugar they eat. And although genetically engineered, the
bacteria are not producing something completely synthetic.
“The molecules we’re creating are made in nature by plants
and organisms,” Reiling says. “We’re just changing the
setting in which they’re made.”
Story by Melinda Wenner. This article appeared in
"Plenty" in May 2008.
Copyright Environ Press 2008
http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/energy/stories/next-generation-biofuels-nearly-identical-to-gasoline-and-diesel |