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Biofuels

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UEET 101 Emerging Technology Energy Engineering Unit Biofuels Presented By Pradip Majumdar Professor Department of Mechanical Engineering Northern Illinois University – PowerPoint PPT presentation

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Title: Biofuels


1
Biofuels
UEET 101 Emerging Technology Energy Engineering
Unit
  • Presented By
  • Pradip Majumdar
  • Professor
  • Department of Mechanical Engineering
  • Northern Illinois University
  • DeKalb, IL 60115

2
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.

3
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.

4
  • 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.

5
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.

6
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
7
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)?

8
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
9
  • 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.

10
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?

11
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!

12
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

13
Energy Animations
  • Biomass Program
  • EERE Biomass Program Home Page
  • EERE Biomass Program Home Page
  • BP
  • www.bp.com
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