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Algal Oil - The Answer To Global Warming
What if we can turn around Global Warming by actually using the Greenhouses Gases that pour into the atmosphere into the fuels that we need, and prevent the huge rise in oil prices that will follow the inevitable end of the economic winter we are currently facing?
There are many ways of making fuel. We can turn coal into oil (messy and expensive), we can use more gas (but one day we will run out), we can turn our corn and sugar and rice into ethanol, and the poor can grow hungry.
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The price of oil is exploding; many people on lower incomes throughout the world are going hungry, because vast amounts of food crops such as oilseeds, corn, sugar, canola, wheat and rice are being turned into biofuels. There are amazing alternatives, especially from Australian scientists. Over the next few weeks, this site will bring them too you, starting with research from CSIRO, the official Australian Government, and world class research establishment.
Bio-crude turns cheap waste into valuable fuel
Reference: 08/09
CSIRO and Monash University
“We’ve been able to create a concentrated bio-crude which is much more stable than that achieved elsewhere in the world.”
Dr Steven Loffler
Dr Steven Loffler (PhD)
Senior Research Scientist
Phone: 61 3 9545 2268
Fax: 61 3 9545 2448
The bio-crude oil can be used to produce high value chemicals and biofuels, including both petrol and diesel replacement fuels.
“By making changes to the chemical process, we’ve been able to create a concentrated bio-crude which is much more stable than that achieved elsewhere in the world,” says Dr Steven Loffler of CSIRO Forest Biosciences.
“This makes it practical and economical to produce bio-crude in local areas for transport to a central refinery, overcoming the high costs and greenhouse gas emissions otherwise involved in transporting bulky green wastes over long distances.”
The process uses low value waste such as forest thinnings, crop residues, waste paper and garden waste, significant amounts of which are currently dumped in landfill or burned.
By using waste, our Furafuel technology overcomes the food versus fuel debate which surrounds biofuels generated from grains, corn and sugar,” says Dr Loffler.
“The project forms part of CSIRO’s commitment to delivering cleaner energy and reducing greenhouse gas emissions by improving technologies for converting waste biomass to transport fuels.”
The plant wastes being targeted for conversion into biofuels contain chemicals known as lignocellulose , which is increasingly favoured around the world as a raw material for the next generation of bio-ethanol.
CSIRO and Monash University
The research to date is supported by funding from CSIRO’s Energy Transformed Flagship program, Monash University, Circa Group and Forest Wood Products Australia.
CSIRO initiated the National Research Flagships to provide science-based solutions in response to Australia Australia
Fast facts
· The food versus fuel issue a prominent debate, with biofuels blamed for rising food prices in some cases
· Second generation biofuels made from woody waste - garden clippings, plantation waste and sawmill waste - show promise as a way forward
· Biorefineries of the not too distant future could reduce our dependence on oil, turning cheap waste into valuable products like biofuels, paints and plastics
Fast facts
· CSIRO and Monash University's Furafuel Process creates a stable bio-crude oil from lignocellulose found in green waste such as waste paper and garden waste
· The technology makes it economical to produce bio-crude in local areas for transport to a central biorefinery , rather than transporting bulky green waste to the refinery
Just like crude oil, bio-crude can be used to produce high value chemicals and fuels
Dr Steven Loffler: turning timber residues into biofuels
With expertise in engineering and paper science, Dr Steven Loffler leads a project on the production of biofuels from paper, timber and crop wastes.
Dr Loffler is a senior research scientist with CSIRO's Forest Biosciences Division .
In addition to the biofuels project, his research covers:
development and application of paper coating for enhancing print qualitymeasurement of print quality forflexographic and ink jet printingpaper formationmeasurement and modelling of liquid penetration into porous media.
Dr Loffler’s biofuels project, Lignocellulose to biocrude , is an initiative of CSIRO’s Energy Transformed Flagship.
“Our process creates a stable oil that can then be tankered to the biorefinery .”
Dr Steven Loffler, Theme Leader
His research team is developing technology for economically converting into high value chemicals and biofuels a variety of low value waste products, such as:
waste paperforest thinningscrop residuesgarden waste.
Waste from paper mills
The researchers have found a way of using a novel chemical process to convert material collected from wastes from paper mills with other lignocellulose rich wastes and residues into a concentrated liquid ‘biocrude oil’ that can be transported easily to a processing plant.
Dr Loffler said that until now it has been uneconomic to use green waste materials, such as forest thinnings and straw, to make biofuels and environmentally friendly chemicals because of the high cost of trucking the bulky waste many hundreds of kilometres for processing.
'There have been plenty of attempts around the world to do this, but the bio-oil has been unstable and turns into bitumen in just weeks,' says Dr Loffler.
Stable oil
'Our process creates a stable oil that can be tankered to the biorefinery in a similar way as crude oil is carried to conventional petrochemical refineries.'
'This renewable liquid can potentially be converted into either fuel replacements or value-added polymers and industrial chemicals, using current technology.'
'The fuel replacements can be gasoline or diesel substitutes, or ethanol.'
CSIRO is now selecting trees with more desirable traits for making biofuels, plastics, and other renewable products that will provide new value streams from forest-based materials.
Other projects
Dr Loffler has led four projects carried out under the auspices of the Cooperative Research Centre (CRC) for Functional Communication Surfaces.
These projects have helped paper companies better understand printing performance on various grades of paper, as well as developing fundamental understanding of linerboard behaviour on wetting.
Background
In 1989 Dr Loffler completed a Bachelor of Engineering at the University of Adelaide, South Australia.
In 1996 he completed his Doctorate in chemical engineering at the University of Cambridge United Kingdom .
Before joining CSIRO Forest Biosciences in 1998, Dr Loffler was a Research Fellow in the Polymer Science Group, Department of Chemical Engineering at The University of Melbourne, where he studied carbon compounds produced during pyrolysis .
Dr Loffler has also been a recipient of a Gottstein Fellowship.
Further information in forestry with the CSIRO Forest Biosciences overview.
Biofuels and competition in Australia
This feature article discusses competition between biofuels and alternative markets in the Australian context and can be reprinted by the media.
Andrea Wild
Our need for greener and more secure transport fuels is creating competition with food production, use of agricultural lands and even the manufacturing of soap. Competition between food and fuel is perhaps the most prominent issue, with the biofuels industry blamed for everything from rising costs of tortillas in Mexico and rapeseed oil in Europe , to a shortage of hops in small-scale breweries in the United States .
Food versus fuel
Competition between using crops for food and crops for fuel is sometimes direct, for example diverting sugar cane from producing sugar for human consumption to produce ethanol as an additive to petrol. For other crops the effect is less clear. The picture is more complicated when considering diverting agricultural lands and water to produce feedstocks for biofuels.
In Australia , issues related to food versus fuel or land-use versus fuel haven’t been relevant to the biofuels industry because, so far, the industry hasn’t been competing with human food or animal feed, either directly or indirectly.
“The biofuels industry here is quite small,” explains Dr Deborah O’Connell of CSIRO. “It supplies less than 0.5 per cent of our transport fuel and our biodiesel and ethanol are made from wastes and co-products of food production such C-molasses, waste starch from flour milling, and tallow from abattoirs.
“However, if demand for biofuels in Australia were to expand significantly, the waste products currently being used wouldn’t meet the needs of the industry.
“Internationally, the food versus fuel issue is complicated. It’s difficult to say whether food prices have increased because of biofuels or whether other issues such as drought, climate change and economic factors are to blame.
“Though biofuels may not necessarily be the key factor causing price hikes in food markets around the world, they have added to the competitive pressures for land use.”
While difficult to measure, it seems safe to say that the biofuels industry is placing more demand on crops and agricultural lands, with food, fibre , livestock and biofuel producers competing for the same commodity crops in the international market.
Biofuels are creating competition not only for crops with alternative markets such as human food and animal feed, but waste products such as tallow, which is used to manufacture soap and detergents. There are also issues surrounding the effects of diverting water and even human labour to producing feedstocks for biofuels.
New technologies on the horizon don’t use food crops but the fibrous woody parts of plants, known as lignocellulose . These technologies can create biofuels from feedstocks such as garden waste, forest and sawmill waste, or even plantations dedicated to energy production.
Greenhouse benefits of biofuels
Understanding the greenhouse gas implications of biofuels requires a lifecycle analysis of the different feedstocks and products. If crops are grown from scratch for use as biofuels, then even the greenhouse costs of the tractor used in sowing the seeds and the fertiliser used on the young plants needs to be factored in.
“The outcome is completely different for biofuels based on waste cooking oil from restaurants than for biofuels made from crops like corn which require intensive agricultural practices,” says Dr O’Connell.
“The lignocellulose feedstocks we’ve been looking at show quite considerable reductions in greenhouse emissions, but it’s by no means something that applies across the board for biofuels.”
Second generation biofuels: the way forward
Biofuels are moving on from first generation technologies, those using sugar or starch to produce ethanol, and waste oil to produce biodiesel. First generation technologies have been a useful first step in a transitioning away from oil, but to go forward relying only on these technologies would require new sources of oil, sugar or starch.
Second generation biofuels use non-food biomass, such as lignocellulose to make biodiesel and ethanol. Food issues don’t come into play, except through indirect competition for land, water and so on, unless the lignocellulose is sourced from green waste that could otherwise be disposed of in landfill.
“Second generation biofuels show promise for making a greater contribution to transport fuel use in Australia, but this is critically dependent on sustainable production of biomass at a competitive cost,” says Dr O’Connell.
“We are seeing if we can grow feedstock for biofuels on less productive land not suitable for producing human food or animal feed. This could augment using wastes such as garden waste, forest thinnings, crop residues and waste paper as a source of lignocellulose .”
Second generation technology recently developed by CSIRO and Monash University for producing a stable bio-crude oil from lignocellulose is on the table for turning cheap waste into valuable end products including petrol and diesel replacement fuels and other high value chemicals.
Bio-crude works in much the same way as crude oil, yielding a stable product that can be produced in local areas from green waste and then transported to central refineries for further processing.
“CSIRO is also looking at making other products currently derived from crude oil,” says Dr Simon Potter of CSIRO. “These products could range from biofuels or pharmaceuticals, to textiles and functional food additives.”
“Products like paint and plastics traditionally form a large part of the output of crude oil refineries. Being able to make these products in biorefineries from oils derived from lignocellulose would help make biofuels themselves more economically viable.”
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