Working toward a World Beyond Oil

When it comes to energy, today’s most pressing issue is the need to develop economical and environmentally sustainable alternatives to fossil fuels. Cellulosic ethanol provides a promising alternative to satisfy transportation energy needs. Zymetis is working to make landmark contributions to the biorefining processes necessary to bring this important product to market.

Peak oil

“Peak oil” – the point in time when the maximum rate of global petroleum extraction is reached, after which the rate of production enters terminal decline – has moved from a controversial theory to a part of the vernacular. While debate rages over exactly when we will hit the peak, a simple reality remains: we are in the throes of a pending energy crisis that requires an evolution away from fossil fuels. Increasing extraction costs, declining production, and higher costs for the end user mean that there will be no choice but to use alternative sources of energy.

In his book, The End of Oil, Paul C. Roberts states: “The march of human progress may well have been marked by a series of energy crises that either killed off a particular civilization or helped push it to the next level of technological and economic development.” The question before us, therefore, is not “should we react?”, but rather “how?”. At Zymetis, we’re working hard to apply novel technology to change the economics of alternative energy production.

Bio-Fuel

While many alternative energies demand exploration, there’s only a handful of promising fuels for the transportation sector. Among them, “bio-fuels” – liquid energy sources compatible with current automotive and aviation engines – stand out as the most promising. Bio-fuels are fuels that can be derived from existing and readily available plant material.

Today, the leading bio-fuel is ethanol, a combustible alcohol fermented from plant sugars. Ethanol is a proven source of energy for industrial and consumer markets and is in wide use as a gasoline substitute all over the world. For Brazil, ethanol has provided a path to energy independence. The energetics of ethanol production are very favorable under real-world conditions, with Brazil generating ethanol that has 8 times the energy content of all production inputs. In short, ethanol can be a substantial source of a nation’s transportation energy.

In addition to economic arguments for ethanol, there are many other sustainable bio-fuel options, including butanol, isobutanol, lipid precursors to oil from bacteria and algae and a host more.  The benefits of all of these alternatives to petroleum include substantial environmental benefits are realized when it replaces gasoline, most notably in the form of reduced carbon emissions. From an operational perspective, combustion of these alternatives produces less pollution than do oil-based fuels.

The benefits, however, don’t stop at the end use of the fuel. The growth of biomass requires the consumption of atmospheric CO2, meaning that greenhouse gases are removed from the atmosphere during the growth phase. Compared to fossil fuels, which release CO2 sequestered from the atmosphere millions of years ago, next-generation bio-fuels combustion has a smaller carbon footprint.

Food-for-Fuel

If next generation bio-fuels are such a positive alternative to fossil fuels, then why have select politicians and policy advocates chosen to demonize it in the press? The answer lies in the concern over the use of agricultural resources and outputs that could otherwise be used to feed humanity. While complex in nature, the “food-for-fuel” debate can be summarized in one simple question: what are the moral implications of taking food from humans to feed automobiles?

As much reading exists on this subject, we’ll not wade into the matter here. Sufficed to say that, at Zymetis, we are concerned about the issue and are working toward a future that captures the best of bio-fuels without the compromise. That future is Cellulosic Bio-fuels.

Cellulosic Bio-fuels

Cellulosic bio-fuel refers to fuels made from plant material that is not used for human consumption. This material – commonly referred to as “biomass” – does not use food crops to produce energy. That enegy comes from the sugar pent up in the cell walls of plant matter.  Pursuing fuels from biomass, therefore, is specifically not “food-for-fuel”.

Unfortunately, this simple fact is often overlooked in public debate over bio-fuel, particularly ethanol, as an energy source. Whereas first generation ethanol production used food crops such as corn, cellulosic ethanol uses agricultural waste such as corn stover, timber products such as poplar trees, prairie grasses such as switchgrass, and other sources of biomass that are not consumed by humans.

All of these materials can be used to produce ethanol and a host of other beneficial and targets liquid energy sources because all of them are made substantially from cellulose or hemi-cellulose. Cellulose is a fiborous material created when sugars connect in long chains or in crystaline patterns. Cellulose, therefore, provides an excellent basic stock from which sugars are extracted to make substitutes for petroleum.

Not Just Fuel

While most discussions of “oil” are discussions of “gasoline”, the reality is that approximately half of the economic value of a barrel of oil is not combustion fuels—it comes from petro-chemicals.  Specialty and fine chemicals, including pharmaceuticals, prevade virtually every class of manufactured product in the modern economy.  Chemicals derived from petroleum are in our plastics, fibers, additives, cosmetics and even some of the items we ingest.  In order to achieve a world beyond oil, therefore, new technologies must also address petro-chemicals.

The effort to create sustainable paths to chemicals is gaining momentum.  Sustainable chemistry, like bio-fuels, relies on sugar.  Sugar provides chemical producers the most flexible feedstock to create sustainable precursors to petroleum-derived chemicals.  Sugar is an excellent feedstock for the production of succinate, glutamate, PLO, BDO and a very broad spectrum of other chemical compounds that can make the things we need and love.  Getting to that sugar in a way that is not bleeding the food sugar supply is an equally important challenge.  Changing the methods of production will require the same fundamental technologies currently being sought in the bio-fuels marketplace.

The Path Forward

The primary barrier to bio-fuels and sustainable chemical production from biomass is the difficulty and expense of breaking down cellulose into necessary sugars. Zymetis brings bio-engineering and process-engineering innovations to overcome these obstacles. By exploiting the natural ability of certain bacteria to break down cellulose into sugars, Zymetis has developed an economical solution to one of the chief barriers to biomass sugar creation.

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