Biofuels

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Biofuels
UEET 101 Emerging Technology Energy Engineering
Unit

• Presented By
• Pradip Majumdar
• Professor
• Department of Mechanical Engineering
• Northern Illinois University
• DeKalb, IL 60115

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What is Biofuel?

• Biofuels are solid, liquid, gas fuels derived
  from recently dead biological materials.
• They are distinguished from the fossil fuels,
  which are formed from long dead biological
  materials over a long period of time.
• Biofuels can be produced theoretically from any
  biological or organic carbon-source materials
• - Most common being the
  photosynthetic plant
• - and other plant-derived materials
  such woodchips,
• trash etc.
• They essentially recycle existing carbon in the
  atmosphere rather than releasing any new carbon
  from fossil fuels.
• - because plants used in the
  production of the fuel
• removed carbon dioxide from the
  atmosphere.
• In theory they are endlessly renewable.

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Common Bio-fuel Production

• There are two common strategies for bio-fuel
  production
• 1. Grow crops high in starch (Corn and
  maize) or grow
• crops high in sugar (sugar cane, sugar
  beet and
• sweet sorgum) and then use yeast
  fermentation to
• produce Ethyl Alcohol or Ethanol.
• - The most common bio-fuels are in
  the form of
• ethanol.

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• Grow plants that contain high amount of
• vegetable oil such as oil palm, soy bean,
• algae.
• - when these oils are heated, their
  viscosity is
• reduced and they can be burned directly
  in a
• diesel engine.
• or
• - they can be chemically processed to
• produce fuels such as biodiesel.
• Wood and its byproducts can also be converted
  into biofuels such as wood gas, methanol and
  ethanol fuel.

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Problems with Ethanol-Biofuel

• Currently, ethanol is produced primarily from
  food grade materials such as such corn and souya.
• It uses a energy-intensive process that may not
• save a lot of fossil fuel.
• Study shows that USA can not produce enough
• ethanol from corn to meet its demand.
• Current rush to produce ethanol from food grade
  material lead to global food shortage and
  increased food price.

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Alternate Technology to Produce Ethanol

• New research is focused on to develop
  more efficient processes to make ethanol from
  wider range of non-food grade biomass.
• The key elements of a biomass is the cellulose
  that gives plant cells their strong walls.
• The process involves converting cellulose
  into sugar and then sugar into ethanol

Ethanol
Cellulose
Sugar
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Conversion Process

• One of the recent effort is to turn any
  carbon-rich organic material into a gas and then
  into liquid fuel.
• Potential source for this carbon-rich organic
  biomass
• - Pine tress
• - Wood Chips
• - Trash (Municipal solid waste
• - Farming residues (cornstalks)
• - timber residues (unusable parts of
  logged trees)
• Challenge is to cheaply transport these leftovers
  to the ethanol plants.
• How about leaves, small limbs, waste woods
  (forest leftovers)?

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Conversion Process
Conventional Approach

Gas
Biomass
Problem removing Nitrogen
Nitrogen (If air is used)
Oxygen (Expensive) or Air

• Syngas is a mixture of mostly Carbon
  monoxide and hydrogen
• Syngas is generally converted into liquid fuel
  ethanol by means of a catalyst (Range Fuels)
• Newer approach involves no use of catalyst and
  but use bacteria to ferment the syngas into
  ethanol.

New Approach (By Range Fuels and Coskata)
Biomass
Syngas
Ethanol
Steam
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• The amount of ethanol produced in processes with
• chemical catalyst is around 70-80 gallons per
  ton.
• Bacteria-based process may produce 100 gallon
• per ton - this process makes more ethanol
  rather than other products such as butanols,
  propanol,
• hexanol, octanol and other alcohols.

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Some Practical Issues

• Main challenge is to design a system that gives
  steady supply of
• ethanol from any biomass.
• Sorting out trash is a major huddle practical
  issues
• - Plastic and bald tires are ideal use.
• Range Fuels system is currently designed for wood
  chips.
• - pretty uniform in size
• - no need for sorting process (taking out bad
  stuffs such as
• batteries)
• Use of garbage is quite challenging and may be
  risky for initial trials.
• - There may not be enough of it ( ???)
• - Municipal solid waste is less than 10
  of all the available
• biomass.
• - Is sorting process worthwhile?

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Prospects of Biofuels

• Need to develop more efficient ethanol production
  process from non-food grade biomass.
• Need to develop infrastructures for packaging and
  transporting biomass waste to ethanol plant in a
  economical manner.
• Estimated current cost of ethanol is 2.10 per
  gallon.
• Projected cost is 1.33 per gallon by 2012 with
  in- progress in technologies.
• Can we reach 1.00 per gallon (Target) ?
• Future for biofuel cars May be!

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Some National and International Issues

• Mitigation of carbon emission levels
• Oil prices
• Food vs. fuel
• Deforestation and soil erosion
• Impact on water resources
• Energy balance and eficiency

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Energy Animations

• Biomass Program
• EERE Biomass Program Home Page
• EERE Biomass Program Home Page
• BP
• www.bp.com