The lignin molecules are clumped around the target sugar molecules, forming a barrier the alcohol producing microbes often can’t penetrate.  The lignin could first be exposed to heat and steam or caustic acids and bases to break it down. These extra steps make the process more expensive and often generate hazardous waste.  The process consumes time, materials and energy all adding to the facility cost and operating expense – the reasons behind ethanol not being on schedule with U.S. policy to take transport market share.

A team of researchers from the University of Florida and the biotechnology company Chesapeake-PERL Inc. of Savage, Md. have isolated two enzymes termites use to break up lignin.  They’re reporting in a paper published online in the journal Insect Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, a determination that enzymes found in termite salivary tissues may be able to accomplish the same task, and at room temperature.  If so and the costs are not high, the enzymes work quickly and require no massive facility costs – a breakthrough could be at a hand.

The study follows more than two years of work to identify nearly 7,000 genes associated with the termite gut. The researchers are wading through the genes to identify which ones are associated with enzymes that could be useful, and they are hopeful that many more such exciting discoveries are yet to come. That makes for a bit of surprise a salivary enzyme turned up further down tract and has been identified and sourced back up the tract.

University of Florida entomologist Mike Scharf, who led the research said, “Once we figure out the best way to integrate this sort of enzyme into the process, it could drop the cost of producing cellulosic ethanol significantly.”

James Preston, a UF microbiology professor who studies enzymes in bacteria that break down plant material said, “This is definitive and original research that could realistically be a significant contribution to green energy. It’s this kind of work that keeps pushing cellulosic ethanol toward practicality.”

From the study abstract: two gut laccase isoforms (RfLacA and RfLacB) were sequenced from the termite Reticulitermes flavipes. Phylogenetic analyses comparing translated R. flavipes laccases to 67 others from prokaryotes and eukaryotes indicate that the R. flavipes laccases are evolutionarily unique. Alignments with crystallography-verified laccases confirmed that peptide motifs involved in metal binding are 100% conserved in both isoforms. Laccase transcripts and phenoloxidase activity were most abundant in symbiont-free salivary gland and foregut tissue, verifying that the genes and activities are host-derived.

Using a baculovirus-insect expression system, the two isoforms were functionally expressed with histidine tags and purified to near homogeneity. ICP-MS (inductively coupled plasma – mass spectrometry) analysis of RfLacA identified bound metals consisting mainly of copper ( 4 copper molecules per laccase protein molecule and  3 per histidine tag) with lesser amounts of calcium, manganese and zinc. Both recombinant enzyme preparations showed strong activity towards the lignin monomer sinapinic acid and four other phenolic substrates.

By contrast, both isoforms displayed much lower or no activity against four melanin precursors, suggesting that neither isoform is involved in integument formation. Modification of lignin alkali by the recombinant RfLacA preparation was also observed. These findings provide evidence that R. flavipes gut laccases are evolutionarily distinct, host-derived, produced in the salivary gland, secreted into the foregut, bind copper, and play a role in lignocellulose digestion. These findings contribute to a better understanding of termite digestion and gut physiology, and will assist future translational studies that examine the contributions of individual termite enzymes in lignocellulose digestion.

Somewhere between the study and the university press release the jump was made to alcohol fuels.  One can bet with confidence that the biotechnology company Chesapeake-PERL wouldn’t bother unless the target was to get a lower cost lignin process.  Chesapeake-PERL hasn’t updated the company site as of this writing so perhaps in time the clarity of the research to product path will become clearer.

Even in a technically specific explanation the science looks good.  Termites have been a fascinating potential source of information about taking wood fiber apart and getting useful products for decades.  Now genetic testing and steady determined research is getting some results.

Scharf said at the end of the pres release quite sanguinely, “We still have a long way to go before we’re finished. But, in the meanwhile, we can start putting what we have discovered to good use.”

Just so, professor Scharf, and congratulations.

For Canada and the U.S. the oil boom is in the field called the Bakken, a widely spread oil reservoir with top quality oil trapped in a difficult rock right in the center of the North American continent.

Bakken Formation in the Williston Basin. Click image for the largest view.

Geologist JW Nordquist discovered the Bakken in 1953. He described it as an “Oreo cookie” arrangement of hard dolomite rock sandwiched between two darker shale layers.  For decades, petroleum geologists thought the Bakken shale was the source of the oil pools in the wider Williston Basin. But in 1999, Leigh Price, a geochemist working for the US Geological Survey (USGS), wrote a paper proposing that most of the oil from Bakken shale was still trapped in the Bakken Formation. He suggested the “cream” in the Nordquist Oreo cookie contained up to 500 billion barrels of crude, making it a prime exploration target. It is the dolomite “filling” that contains the oil causing all the excitement today, although that oil may have formed in the surrounding shale.  Mr. Price died in 2002, before his paper was published. The USGS was skeptical and for years refused to release the report and their review of it.

Meanwhile, an independent petroleum geologist, Richard Findley, reviewed drilling logs from abandoned Bakken wells and concluded that the operators missed the pay zone by drilling right through the hard oil bearing rock between the two shale layers. He interested Lyco Energy, based in Texas, in his theory.  Lyco brought in the services company Halliburton to try out what were then developing technologies: horizontal drilling; and hydraulic fracturing.

Findley, Lyco and Halliburton discovered and developed the Elm Coulee oilfield of eastern Montana in 1997.  The Elm Coulee oilfield now pumps about 50,000 barrels per day of light, sweet crude and is considered a small part of the larger Bakken field.

Non-USGS geochemist and geologist research has largely vindicated Mr. Price.  Non-government estimates of Bakken oil in place have ranged from 10 billion to 500 billion barrels. The most recent, built with sophisticated computer modeling, suggests 300 billion to 400 billion barrels could be realistic.  Every new well fills in the gaps making the later estimates stronger bases for more investments.

By 2008 in an effort to catch up, the USGS estimated that about 4 billion barrels of oil could theoretically be produced from the US part of the Bakken with current technology It represents enough oil to satisfy US consumers for about six months – hardly a game-changer.

Technology is advancing, so actual oil recovery could vastly exceed initial estimates and the Bakken is still a very young field with little development.

Canada’s Crescent Point Energy has tested a fracturing and water-flood recovery technique that boosts recovery from wells in Saskatchewan to 30 per cent of oil in place. “These mainly untapped resource pools provide Crescent Point with over 5,000 drilling locations and the potential to add over 500 million barrels of reserves,” Scott Saxberg, the company’s president and chief executive, told the Calgary Herald newspaper. “It’s unique that it’s light oil, and in our back yard, and it’s low cost,” he told Canada’s National Post.

Production form the Bakken is relatively economical as well. Costs for producing oil from the relatively shallow wells required to tap Bakken oil pools have fallen to about $5 per barrel, compared with tens of dollars per barrel for extracting tar-like bitumen from Canada’s oil sands and chemically converting it into synthetic light crude.  As a measure of the confidence major investments are underway the Canadian pipeline development company Enbridge is expanding their network to accommodate more oil from the Williston Basin.

The U.S. portion is described as the country’s largest oil deposit outside Alaska, and its biggest and most accessible part is in Canada. The Bakken could prove to be one of the largest oilfields in the world.  The American Association of Petroleum Geologists says it is the biggest continuous oil accumulation it has ever assessed.

In a reality check, since Drake’s first well over 150 years ago the hunt has been for wells the flow under their own pressure leading to the gushers then followed by pumping.  The hunt goes on today as seen in the BP blow out fiasco in the Gulf of Mexico.

But most any oil basin is going to have oil formations that are not gushers, with huge amounts of more difficult to recover oil.  The list is just being looked at now.  The Bakken may be big, but it’s actually the first of what is likely to be more to come.

That makes the water splitting process much more desirable if the hydrogen and oxygen have their own electrodes and the freed gases come off separately.  One can store hydrogen in a near pure state that must leak to get to oxygen for ignition and can only ignite with a proper mixture.  That’s much, much safer.

MITs Daniel Nocera and his associates have found yet another formulation, based on inexpensive and widely available materials that can efficiently catalyze the splitting of water molecules using electricity in an electrolyzer. This form of electrolyzer uses two different electrodes, one of which releases the oxygen atoms and the other the hydrogen atoms.   They described the advance at the 240th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society, being held in Boston this week.

Nocera’s report focused on the electrolyzer catalysts – materials that jumpstart chemical reactions like the ones that break water up into hydrogen and oxygen.  Good catalysts already are available for the part of the electrolyzer that produces hydrogen. What are missing were inexpensive, long-lasting catalysts for the production of oxygen. Nocera’s new catalyst fills that gap and boosts oxygen production by 200-fold. It eliminates the need for expensive platinum catalysts and potentially toxic chemicals used in making them.

The new catalyst has already been licensed to newly formed Sun Catalytix, which envisions developing safe, super-efficient versions of the electrolyzer, suitable for homes and small businesses, within two years.

Nocera, along with postdoctoral researcher Mircea Dincă and graduate student Yogesh Surendranath, report the discovery is nickel borate, made from materials that are even more abundant and inexpensive than an earlier find.  In 2008, Nocera reported the discovery of a durable and low-cost material for the oxygen-producing electrode based on the element cobalt.

Nocera is also pointing out a significant observation of his findings, that the original cobalt compound was not a unique, anomalous material, and suggests that there may be a whole family of such compounds that researchers can study in search of one that has the best combination of characteristics to provide a widespread, long-term energy-storage technology.

The research is still at the early stage. “This is a door opener,” Nocera says. “Now, we know what works in terms of chemistry. One of the important next things will be to continue to tune the system, to make it go faster and better. This puts us on a fast technological path.” While the two compounds discovered so far work well, he says, he is convinced that as they carry out further research even better compounds will come to light. “I don’t think we’ve found the silver bullet yet,” he says.

If you’re interested in getting in the hydrogen game Nocera is the guy to catch up with.

In the course of their research Nocera and his team have increased the rate of production from these catalysts a hundredfold from the level they initially reported on cobalt two years ago.

There are concentrated alkali based commercial scale electrolyzers of good efficiency now, but that kind of thing isn’t going work at small scale in residential, commercial, solar driven or remote, off grid kinds of locations.  The alkali units need professional continuous oversight.

Personal Solar Hydrogen Energy System. Click image for more info.

Nocera’s idea is more rational for the individual, “Our goal is to make each home its own power station,” says Nocera. “We’re working toward development of ‘personalized’ energy units that can be manufactured, distributed and installed inexpensively. There certainly are major obstacles to be overcome – existing fuel cells and solar cells must be improved, for instance.”

Such a system would consist of rooftop solar energy panels to produce electricity for heating, cooking, lighting, and to charge the batteries on the homeowners’ electric cars. Surplus electricity would go to the electrolyzer, to break down ordinary water into its two components, hydrogen and oxygen. Both would be stored in tanks. In the dark of night, when the solar panels cease production, the system would shift gears, feeding the stored hydrogen and oxygen into a fuel cell that produces electricity (and clean pure drinking water as a byproduct). Such a system would produce clean electricity 24 hours a day, seven days a week – even when the sun isn’t shining.

The technological barriers are cracking away for Nocera’s idea.  The matter in not so long a time will likely be the capital investment needed to buy the systems.  Its going to have to be cheap, and the solar cell crowd is getting there steadily if not allowing for wind, hail and hurricane weather.  The biggest breakthrough will need to be in the fuel cell.  That’s the main problem.

But there is great potential here.  Nocera’s research isn’t knocking the concentrated alkali systems performance over – yet.  But if he can, then mass production would drive to lower costs even faster.

It’s another race that is getting interesting to watch.

“Introns are mysterious elements in evolution. Until the 1970s it was believed that genes in all organisms would be continuous and that they would make a continuous RNA, which would then get translated into a continuous protein. It was found, however, that most genes of the eukaryotes, the higher organisms including humans, aren’t like that at all. Most of the genes in higher organism are discontinuous. They consist of DNA coding regions that are separated by areas known as introns.”

“Genomes become loaded down with these introns, which are thought to have evolved from genomic parasites that existed for their own benefit and could spread without killing the host organism. It remains a major question in evolution as to why these introns exist, and how they came to compose such a large part of the human genome,” said Lambowitz.

Intron Secondary Structure in RNA. Click image for more info.

It’s a grand mystery, all right.  Genetics, epigenetics and the intron effect make the field of genetic sciences fascinating, time consuming and inevitably a source of many wonders to come.

Lambowitz and Georg Mohr began investigating Thermosynechococcus elongatus, a cyanobacterium that can survive at temperatures up to 150º F, after they noticed an unusually high percentage of the bacteria’s genetic sequence was composed of elements known as group II introns. These bacteria were found living in hot springs in Japan and may help solve one of the mysteries of the early evolution of complex organisms.  Lambowitz and Mohr’s study publishes free online this week in PLoS Biology. The bacterium has lessons and perhaps resources key to 21st century biofuel production.

In order to better understand the early history of introns, Lambowitz and Mohr have focused their investigation on bacteria because they’re believed to be the original evolutionary wellspring of the introns. They’re looking at T. elongatus in particular because it’s the only known bacteria in which introns have proliferated in a manner similar to that in higher organisms, such as humans.

Mohr, a colleague research scientist in Lambowitz’s lab explains, “We can’t go back a billion years in a time machine to see how introns proliferated in the early eukaryotes. What we can do is investigate the mechanisms that have allowed introns to proliferate in this organism, and try to infer how they evolved in eukaryotes, like humans, in which as much as 40 percent of the genome is made up of introns.”

As the pair’s work progressed, one of mechanisms they’ve identified, perhaps the most surprising, has been that heat plays a significant role in allowing introns to proliferate in T. elongatus. High temperatures, like those found in the hot springs in which the bacteria live, can unwind the DNA strands in the genome and make it easier for the introns to insert themselves.

Lambowitz expounds on the heat impact with a preliminary thought: This evidence of “DNA melting” is particularly suggestive when trying to imagine how introns proliferated in early eukaryotes, because the earth was hotter a billion or so years ago, when the early eukaryotes emerged. The genomes of the early eukaryotes may have begun with only a few introns, but over time, thanks in part to the high temperatures, the introns could have proliferated rapidly.  It’s a good starting point kind of idea.

The steak of the discovery and perhaps an early use may prove an enormous boon to researchers who are trying to use other high-temperature (“thermophilic”) bacteria to improve the efficiency of biofuels.  While we observers don’t get to hear about the experiments that don’t work out there must a lot of ideas that should have worked in genetic engineering that didn’t.  A better handle on the intron or the control of them or perhaps adding them in an engineered design is a high probability aspect of the best ideas we will see in the coming years.

Lambowitz has a real world example, “There’s one bacterial species in particular, which lives at high temperature and is very good at converting cellulose to ethanol, but has been intractable to genetic manipulation. The Department of Energy has a considerable amount of money invested in it, and they need to improve the strains but haven’t been able to do it. When we discovered these thermophilic introns, which work better at high temperatures, we were able to adapt them pretty rapidly for gene targeting.”  The intron is on its way into genetic engineering.

The technology for using group II introns in gene targeting, known as “targetron” technology, was pioneered by Lambowitz and his coworkers. Lambowitz and Mohr are already working with scientists at Oak Ridge National Laboratory to see if they can successfully genetically engineer thermophilic bacteria for increased biofuel production. They also foresee applying what they’ve discovered about T. elongatus introns and temperature to a whole range of biotech and biomedical applications that involve organisms and enzymes that function best at high temperatures.

Meanwhile the pair is still planning to delve further into the more profound, basic scientific questions that drew them to the subject in the first place.

While introns are seemingly obscure parts of the DNA chain they could prove to be the segment of the engineering opportunity that really puts the biology effort for bio products into high gear.  Much is yet to be discovered, but take note that this level of research is where the Nobel committee should be looking for prizewinners.

Just how all the parts, DNA, RNA, epigenetic effects and the influence of introns fit together promises to be the most interesting story of the 21st century – so far.  What else might be in the manual of life in every cell that will be discovered and put to work is up for research – let the most creative, and inquisitive minds go forth in to the source of the biological universe of life.

The team seems to have a novel take on the catalysts metallic structure.  By incorporating nickel onto a base commercial fluid catalytic cracking process (FCC) called equilibrium catalyst or ECat and co-feeding hydrogen into the reaction system under realistic FCC operations (525 °C, 1.1 atm), the team found that gasoline production increased 32% relative to the standard ECat. That is a massive improvement in gasoline molecule production worthy of some serious note.

Fluid Catalyst Cracking Vegetable Oil to Gasoline. Adding nickel and co-feeding H2 increased gasoline yield 32% relative to a conventional catalyst.

Contrasting to that the scientists learned that incorporating platinum with our without co-feeding hydrogen, was detrimental both to oil conversion and molecule selectivity.  This information closes a door to the very expensive platinum component often thought to be the highest form of metallic catalyst performance.  The scientists are quoted saying in a conclusion a “judicious choice of metal” is vital for performance during vegetable oil cracking.

The matter remains about coming up with hydrogen for the unit.  As adding hydrogen is a common process in most oil refineries using usually a steam process the technology is readily available.  The authors say in the study:

“This approach can be very promising and economical by utilizing recycle system for in-situ hydrogen produced to eliminate the hydrogen requirement from other sources. This concept can also lead to another potential application: co-processing of vegetable oils together with heavier petroleum feedstocks that contain metal, especially nickel, contaminants.”

“In that case, the great advantage is that metal incorporation onto the base FCC catalyst is not required while at the same time gasoline production from the vegetable oil fraction can be enhanced by exploiting the metal deposits present in the petroleum feedstock. These findings may certainly stimulate interest for directing future research in the rational design of new FCC catalysts for the production of biofuels.”

The paper has an interesting introduction that alternative fuel people might want to keep in mind.  There are several main ways to convert biomass to renewable fuels.  The list isn’t comprehensive but does get the main efforts into a short list.
·    Bioalcohols such as ethanol from the fermentation of sugars;
·    Transesterification of plant-based oils or animal fats to biodiesel;
·    Hydrotreatment of vegetable oils to renewable (“green”) diesel;
·    Pyrolysis of biomass to bio-oil, and its upgrading;
·    Gasification of biomass via Fischer-Tropsch synthesis via syngas; and
·    Catalytic cracking of vegetable oils to gasoline, diesel and light olefins similar to the standard FCC process in refineries.

The authors note that, “Depending on the feedstock type, some of the above-mentioned processes are already commercially available, but except for the FCC of vegetable oils, only the fermentation process is directly designed for gasoline (replacement) production. In addition, some of the processes above are still under development because they are very energy- and capital-intensive.”

The advantage for the new FCC process is pointed out by saying, “Thus, catalytic cracking of biomass (e.g., vegetable oils) is the only process that is able to directly produce gasoline, along with diesel and light olefins components. Furthermore, the compatibility of vegetable oil processing with the existing infrastructure of the standard FCC process makes this process much more economically feasible than other methods.”

The point being made hinges on the fact that FCC is a process with extensive support now for the oil refining business including materials and parts, experienced operators and a fully developed market.

The questions lie in the cost of operation – does feeding an FCC using vegetable oil run at higher or lower cost compared to crude and can vegetable oil source at or below the price of crude oil?  At about $2.00 per gallon for crude many vegetable oils could profitably get to an FCC for conversion and marketing.

Fluid Catalytic Cracking is a technology that many thought peaked in development several times over the past decades, but FCC just keeps on giving.  The Europeans have made a significant contribution expanding the use of FCC and there should be a high probability the new catalysts might see commercial use.

Well, press release and research notes aside, they mean that there can be a set of plant species that could provide substantial amounts of biomass grown widely across the planet without an impact on food and feed production.  The troubled firm BP, well before the Gulf well crisis, funded the study.

The study authors discuss the sustainability of current and future crops that could be used to produce advanced biofuels with emerging technologies that use non-edible parts of plants. Such crops include perennial grasses like Miscanthus grown in the rain-fed areas of the U.S. Midwest, East and South; sugarcane in Brazil and other tropical regions, including the southeastern U.S.; Agave in semiarid regions such as Mexico and the U.S. Southwest; and woody biomass from various sources.

The team takes some assumptive license by making some simplifying assumptions: that technology will become available for converting most of the structural polysaccharides that comprise the bodies of plants to sugars, that all the sugars can be used for fuel production, and that the process energy required for the conversion of the sugars to fuels will be obtained from combustion of the other components of the biomass, mostly the lignin.  That way a sugar-to-ethanol bioconversion process using current technology, a metric ton (MT) of switchgrass or poplar, for example, would be expected to yield about 310 liters of ethanol.

The author’s base is founded on the comparative soil impacts.  Maize or corn plants used completely remove much more soil fertility than a perennial plant.  Perennial plants that use C4 photosynthesis, such as sugarcane, energy cane, elephant grass, switchgrass, and Miscanthus, have intrinsically high light, water, and nitrogen use efficiency as compared with that of C3 species as seen in corn.  Moreover reduced tillage and perennial root systems add carbon to the soil and protect against erosion.

While the team reports that tropical Napier Grass in El Salvador natural stands of Echinochloa polystachya on the Amazon floodplain can respectively reach production of 88 and 100 MT/ha/year, temperate Miscanthus x giganteus produced in England at 52°N a peak biomass of 30 MT/ha/year and harvestable biomass of 20 MT/ha/year. (ha is hectare, 2.47 ha per U.S. acre) Miscanthus also offers an important soil protection effect, seasonality leads to an annual cycle of senescence, in which perennial grasses such as Miscanthus mobilize mineral nutrients from the stem and leaves to the roots at the end of the growing season. Thus, harvest of biomass during the winter results in relatively low rates of removal of minerals.

That could account for the observation that stands grown at Rothamsted, UK showed no response to added nitrogen during a 14-year period during which all biomass was removed each year.  In side-by-side trials in central Illinois, unfertilized M. x giganteus produced 60% more biomass than a well-fertilized highly productive maize crop, and across the state, winter-harvestable yields averaged 30 MT/ha/year.

Miscanthis US Growing Area Map. Click image for more info.

The author’s note in an observation that if Miscanthus were used as the only feedstock, less than half of the 14.2 Mha currently set aside for the U.S. Conservation Reserve Program  (CRP) would be required to deliver the ethanol mandate of the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007.  Contrary to that readers should be informed that a great chunk of the CRP land area is tiny little headlands, terraces, protective filters along watercourses and the like.  But there are vast amounts of highly erodeable land that could better serve the economy than being used for corn or soybean production.

Its worthwhile to note that as the authors seem to overlook some details they turned up others.  The Global Potential of Bioenergy on Abandoned Agriculture Lands published in 2008 reveals that more than 600 Mha of land worldwide has fallen out of agricultural production, mostly in the last 100 years.

Most readers will know that for tropical production sugarcane isn’t beaten yet and won’t most likely.  Harvested cane arrives with the sugar in liquid form ready for fermentation and the plant remnants can be burned for distillation with power left over for the electric grid.  Many other regions of the world beyond Brazil are also well suited to sugarcane production or formerly produced sugarcane on land that has been abandoned. Thus, “the total amount of fuel that may be produced from sugarcane worldwide could eventually be a very substantial proportion of global transportation fuels.” As the authors seem to be aware – the potential in sugarcane defies calculation in responsible numbers for now.

Approximately 18% of the earth’s surface is semi-arid and prone to drought.  The authors suggest various Agave species that thrive under arid and semi-arid conditions with high efficiencies of water use and drought resistance hold a potential opportunity for production of biomass for fuels.  Agave species that thrive under arid and semi-arid conditions by using a type of photosynthesis called Crassulacean acid metabolism (CAM) that strongly reduces the amount of water transpired by absorbing CO2 during the cold desert night and then internally assimilating this into sugars through photosynthesis during the warmer days.  By opening their stomata at night, they lose far less water than they would during the day.  Much of the land noted in the Global Potential of Bioenergy on Abandoned Agriculture Lands that has fallen out of agricultural production worldwide is semi-arid, and it appears that the amount of land that may be available for cultivation of Agave species is vast.

The research paper points out that about 89 to 107 Mha of land that were formerly in agriculture globally are now in forests and urban areas.  The authors bravely note the biomass that is harvested annually in the Northern Hemisphere for wood products has an energy content equivalent to approximately 107% of the liquid fuel consumption in the United States.  Wood resources provide regionally specific opportunities for sustainably harvested biomass feedstocks.  That explains the Chevron and Weyerhaeuser deal for biomass.

For this summary its important to note one more point the authors took the time to briefly discuss.  It is inevitable that some mineral soil nutrients will be removed when biomass is harvested, it will be essential to recycle mineral nutrients, which are not consumed in the production of biofuels, from biomass-processing facilities back onto the land. That is virtually all of the minerals.  It needs to be a built in cost before soils are degraded further by any new biomass effort.

This writer’s summary leaves a lot out from the published study including the references, the supporting documentation and the available links.  For this article Science has free registration, an opportunity cost well worth the small effort.

The authors did a good job here, but left a lot out.  There are lots more plants to consider, but the local weather and soils are going to decide what farming can accomplish and the profit for production will in the end decide.  This writers main concern is that highly profitable biomass could displace prime food and feedstock land and force food and feedstock production onto the less optimal soils.  Some oversight, as oppressive as it is – is going to be needed to balance the demands with the conditions – something competition isn’t going to get done.

Luca CEO Robert Pfeiffer says he anticipates that Luca will get permits for larger-scale pilot projects of “restoring” existing wells in the next four to six months.  Luca, one of many start-up companies pursuing technologies to make fossil fuels cleaner has acquired 1,350 coalbed methane wells, which have been sold by their original owners because they are no longer productive enough.

The principle Luca exploits is anaerobic microbes living in subsurface coal, gas, oil and shale reserves for millions of years, feeding on hydrogen-rich organic matter and producing natural gas. Commercial drilling and extraction exposes these anaerobic microorganisms to oxygen by taking water out of the formations and removing essential nutrients that support microbial growth. As a result, the production of biogenic natural gas slows or in some cases ceases. Over time, water is replaced in the geologic formation by natural recharge providing an environment that allows the microbes to once again produce natural gas at low rates.

Luca uses its proprietary technology to restore formation habitats to conditions that enable existing microbes to produce economically significant rates of natural gas at accelerated production volumes.  Then the company harvests this newly created natural gas and delivers it to the national grid via the existing pipeline from the pre depletion era of the wells.

Luca Technologies Underground Process. Click image for more info.

Unlike the oil and gas industry’s extraction methods in which production peaks then steeply declines as stored hydrocarbons are depleted, Luca “gas farms” can reliably produce low-cost clean energy for decades and reuse existing wells and infrastructure to create, extract and transport the natural gas.

How big a deal could this be?  Pfeiffer explains, “Farming” natural gas from depleted wells in the Powder River Basin in Wyoming and Montana alone could produce more gas than the annual consumption in the U.S., said Pfeiffer. Microbes have converted one-hundredth of 1 percent of the coal into methane in existing wells. Luca has reached 3 percent conversion in its labs, which would not happen in actual wells but it reflects the potential of the process.  It could be a very big deal indeed.

The potential, which raised $76 million in equity in late 2008 for Luca, of tapping this stranded natural gas in coalbed methane wells is significant.

When Luca identifies a depleting area or well as a natural gas farming candidate, it withdraws water from the well, transfers it to a mobile nutrient module to replenish essential vitamins and nutrients vital to sustaining microbial community health. The water is then recycled back into the well through existing infrastructure and the mobile nutrient module is moved to other wells to provide nourishment to new subsurface habitats.

Luca then temporarily shuts in the well for an average of one month to allow natural microbial populations to flourish. During this “dwell” period, the now activated microbes begin producing significant amounts of natural gas. Luca harvests the natural gas using the existing system. This cycle of restoration and harvesting enables Luca to produce natural gas from depleting wells for decades.

Its long been known that a portion of natural gas is produced by naturally occurring subsurface microorganisms. Luca’s founders discovered that certain coalbeds, organic-rich shales and oil and gas reserves were teeming with microbial life capable of producing economic and commercially significant volumes of natural gas. Based upon this discovery, Luca founders recognized that integrating the disciplines of oil and gas with biotechnology could produce a solution to the global demand for clean, affordable energy.

Here’s a list of nutrients Luca uses in its natural gas farming process in the Powder River Basin to replenish underground habitats depleted by previous drilling operators: Minerals of calcium added as calcium chloride, magnesium added as magnesium chloride, phosphate added from magnesium phosphate, phosphoric acid, calcium phosphate, sodium phosphate, potassium phosphate, or sodium tripolyphosphate, potassium added as potassium chloride.  Vitamin B-12, Niacin, Thiamin, Riboflavin, Biotin, Pantothenic Acid, Folate are added.  Proteins and perhaps activators, casein hydrolyzates, yeast extract, brewer’s yeast, soy protein, and peptones.

Looks like a nutritionist’s prescription, but Luca isn’t done yet.  Add in some vitality things like glycerol, weak organic acids, formic acid, acetic acid, propionic acid, butyric acid, lactic acid and decanoic acid.  A smorgasbord of supplements!

One has to wonder, just what does a concoction cost to treat a well, how often does a well need to be fed again, does the feeding peak with production running along on its own, and do any of the feedstocks get back to the surface for recycling?

There is an enormous amount of natural gas formation types, from landfills to deep hot rocks.  Somewhere between the extremes is an opportunity that Luca has figured out how to make pay.
If Pfeiffer is right about the potential recovery, and at least in some small part they’re correct now, the reserves in place could multiply dramatically.

Since it’s mostly all proprietary and intellectual property the hard details are out of reach.  But many a gas producer has to be looking over at Luca wondering . . . just how do I make use of that technology?  Many a consumer must be relieved as well . . . natural gas is by no means a short term fuel supply, its here to stay.

Using the bacteria E. coli, with the newly identified alkane operon genetics expressed, the bacteria produce and secrete C13 to C17 mixtures of alkanes and alkenes. This discovery is the first description of the genes responsible for alkane biosynthesis and the first example of a single step conversion of sugar to fuel-grade alkanes by an engineered microorganism.  The yield is in very carbon dense molecules with good hydrogen proportions.

A paper on the work was published in the July 30th issue of the journal Science.

Alkanes are naturally produced by a diverse set of species, but the genetics and biochemistry behind this biology have not been well generally well understood. The LS9 team looked into the genomes of cyanobacteria that produce alkanes in nature, evaluating many and identifying one that was not capable of producing alkanes, said Andreas Schirmer, Associate Director of Metabolic Engineering at LS9, and lead author on the paper. By comparing the genome sequences of the alkane producing with non-producing organisms, LS9 was able to identify the responsible genes.

LS9's Sugar to Fuel Organism Excretion Result. Click image for more info.

The genetics needed are an acyl–acyl carrier protein reductase and an aldehyde decarbonylase, which together convert intermediates of fatty acid metabolism to alkanes and alkenes.  The aldehyde decarbonylase is related to the broadly functional nonheme diiron enzymes.    When the genetic code is engineered into Escherichia coli, the microorganism produces and secretes the C13 to C17 mixtures of alkanes and alkenes. These genes and enzymes can now be leveraged for the simple and direct conversion of renewable raw materials to fungible hydrocarbon fuels.

Steve del Cardayre, Vice President of Research and Development said in the LS9 press release, “This is a one step sugar to diesel process that does not require elevated temperatures, high pressures, toxic inorganic catalysts, hydrogen or complex unit operations. We believe in simple processes at LS9, and the simplicity of this process has allowed us to successfully accelerate its scale-up and development.”

While other biological routes to the production of renewable hydrocarbons are emerging, these other routes require costly and energy intense chemical conversion technologies such as distillation or hydrogenation, adding significantly to the process complexity and cost.  LS9′s patent pending discovery enables the conversion of renewable biomass into fuels and chemicals without the need for these costly and energy intense chemical conversion technologies.

In addition to the alkane work, LS9 is scaling-up its production of an existing biodiesel product and a portfolio of chemicals used in making industrial and consumer products.  The new genetic code for alkanes breakthrough is consistent with LS9′s focus of developing renewable petroleum products using a proprietary one-step fermentation process that significantly reduces the costs and energy inputs.

Bill Haywood, CEO of LS9 said, “This scientific discovery made by the LS9 team is game changing for our company and the advanced biofuels industry. This remarkable breakthrough is yet another successful step in LS9′s progress toward delivering a broad portfolio of renewable fuels and chemicals to the world market as quickly as possible.”

It seems the effort is from collaboration led by researchers with the US Department of Energy’s Joint BioEnergy Institute and including LS9 announced the engineering of a strain of Escherichia coli bacteria to produce biodiesel fuel and other important chemicals derived from fatty acids.  What that might mean for other production beyond LS9 isn’t being discussed.

There is a lot more starch that can be uprated to sugar and plant sugars around than most people realize.  Most are from annual crops, which supports the agricultural community.

What are missing are the efficiency numbers and other relevant to commercial scale matters.  But the ID code in bacteria is now in hand, with other organic processes sure to follow.

The notion to rely on plants to replace an 80 million barrel a day world oil habit isn’t going to happen with any information at hand now, but if the LS9 results get to commercial scale a major dent in the world’s oil habit is in the offing with a massive shift in revenue from oil production to crop growers – a very good idea of its own.

The carbon emissions also would go into an annual recycling mode – something many environmentalists could learn to be happy with.

While the science is very high tech, the execution and operation should be common technology – something that could push fuel production out to many more locations and people – a very good thing as well.

It was a good day last week for LS9 and all the rest of us too.

According to the research team the STEP process is fundamentally capable of converting more solar energy than either photovoltaic or solar thermal processes working alone.

The STEP process uses a high temperature solar powered electrolysis cell to capture CO2 in a single step. Solar thermal energy decreases the energy required for the endothermic conversion of carbon dioxide and kinetically facilitates electrochemical reduction.  Meanwhile visible light solar energy generates the electric charge to drive the electrolysis.

STEP Process Block Diagram. Click image for more info.

For the experiment, the team used a concentrator solar cell to generate 2.7 volts at a maximum power point, with solar to electrical energy efficiencies of 35% under 50 suns illumination, and 37% under 500 suns illumination. The 2.7 V is used to drive two molten electrolysis cells in series at 750 °C and three in series at 950 °C.

At 950 °C running at 0.9 V, the electrolysis cells generate carbon monoxide at 1.3-1.5 amps, and at 750 °C at 1.35 V generate solid carbon formation at similar amps.

Step Process Forms Solid Carbon. Click image for more info.

The George Washington team also was thoughtful enough that the supporting information published along with the paper details the methodology and the materials used in the experiment.

Of great note and acclaim the research team addresses the questions of material resources, saying, “are sufficient to expand to process to substantially impact (decrease) atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide.”  This perspective is rarely observed in research papers and the inclusion by the George Washington team deserves notation and gratitude.  The information gives the research depth of understanding and better chances of improvement.

The key materials issues raised: “A related resource question is whether there is sufficient lithium carbonate, as an electrolyte of choice for the STEP carbon capture process, to decrease atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide. 700 km2 of CPV plant will generate 5×10^13 Amps of electrolysis current, and require ~2 million metric tonnes of lithium carbonate, as calculated from a 2 kg/l density of lithium carbonate, and assuming that improved, rather than flat, morphology electrodes will operate at 5 A/cm2 (1,000 km2) in a cell of 1 mm thick. Thicker, or lower current density, cells will require proportionally more lithium carbonate. Fifty, rather than ten, years to return the atmosphere to pre-industrial carbon dioxide levels will require proportionally less lithium carbonate. These values are viable within the current production of lithium carbonate. Lithium carbonate availability as a global resource has been under recent scrutiny to meet the growing lithium battery market. It has been estimated that the current global annual production of 0.13 million tonnes of LCE (lithium carbonate equivalents) will increase to 0.24 million tonnes by 2015.SI-1 Potassium carbonate is substantially more available, but as noted in the main portion of the paper can require higher carbon capture electrolysis potentials than lithium carbonate.”

Effectively, should the process be brought on line, 700 square kilometers (270 square miles) of this system would extract the “excess atmospheric CO2” within ten years.  If those numbers were accurate an area less than 17 x 17 miles would mop up the “excess” carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.  This is a stretch for reasoning, but the numbers work.

Also there is a platinum matter to consider if the design went to solid carbon capture, but the platinum would be recycled endlessly.

The team is also looking at STEP to generate synthetic jet fuel and synthetic diesel.  That would get some of the carbon cycling.

The team is working at refinement and scaling of STEP for carbon capture.

Without needing a huge source of production energy by using solar the main problem – the energy needed to drive the heating and electrolysis could pretty much be resolved.

There are gaps in the explanation available in the supporting information.  Of primary concern is the concentration level of the CO2 entering the process.  It’s not clear how pure the CO2 would have to be.  Just running air through is one thing, a concentration step to unspecified purity is quite another.

Yet the George Washington team is on to a system with great potential.  The external energy production not needed is very significant; the potential for fuel production or sequestration, depending on one’s political views cannot be overlooked.

Solar powered CO2 to new fuel sources just got much closer.

Rakesh Agrawal, the Winthrop E. Stone Distinguished Professor of Chemical Engineering said,  “What’s important is that you can process all kinds of available biomass  — wood chips, switch grass, corn stover, rice husks, wheat straw …,”

The proposed harvest to production method bypasses a problematic economic barrier for using biofuels: Transporting biomass is expensive because of its bulk volume, whereas liquid fuel from biomass is concentrated and thus far more economical to transport.

Agrawal and his team are making the point, “”Material like corn stover and wood chips has low energy density. It makes more sense to process biomass into liquid fuel with a mobile platform and then take this fuel to a central refinery for further processing before using it in internal combustion engines.”  If they can come up with a low investment processor, they team could have a kind of home run.

The new method is called fast-hydropyrolysis-hydrodeoxygenation, which works by adding hydrogen into the biomass-processing reactor. The hydrogen for the mobile plants would be sourced from natural gas or the biomass itself. However, Agrawal envisions the future use of solar power to produce the hydrogen by splitting water, making the new technology entirely renewable.

The method, which has the shortened moniker of H2Bioil — pronounced H Two Bio Oil — has been studied extensively through modeling, and experiments are under way at Purdue to validate the concept.

Mobile Biomass to Fuel Block Diagram. Click image for more info.

Fast pyrolysis isn’t new, but kicking in an added hydrogen source is and taking the fast pyrolysis on to de oxidizing the product is as well.  It’s a combination of processes that looks innovative.

Singh, who is now a researcher working at Bayer CropScience, said, “Another major thrust of this research is to provide guidelines on the potential liquid-fuel yield from various self-contained processes and augmented processes, where part of the energy comes from non-biomass sources such as solar energy and fossil fuel such as natural gas.”

Results outlining the process, showing how a portion of the biomass is used as a source of hydrogen to convert the remaining biomass to liquid fuel is detailed in a research paper appearing online in June issue of the journal Environmental Science & Technology. The paper was written by former chemical engineering doctoral student Navneet R. Singh, Agrawal, chemical engineering professor Fabio H. Ribeiro and W. Nicholas Delgass, the Maxine Spencer Nichols Professor of Chemical Engineering.  The abstract says in part:

We have estimated sun-to-fuel yields for the cases when dedicated fuel crops are grown and harvested to produce liquid fuel. The stand-alone biomass to liquid fuel processes, that use biomass as the main source of energy, are estimated to produce one-and-one-half to three times less sun-to-fuel yield than the augmented processes. In an augmented process, solar energy from a fraction of the available land area is used to produce other forms of energy such as H2, heat etc., which are then used to increase biomass carbon recovery in the conversion process. However, even at the highest biomass growth rate of 6.25 kg/m2· per year considered in this study, the much improved augmented processes are estimated to have sun-to-fuel yield of about 2%. We also propose a novel stand-alone H2Bioil-B process, where a portion of the biomass is gasified to provide H2 for the fast-hydropyrolysis/hydrodeoxygenation of the remaining biomass. This process is estimated to be able to produce 125−146 ethanol gallon equivalents (ege)/ton of biomass of high energy density oil but needs experimental development. The augmented version of fast-hydropyrolysis/hydrodeoxygenation, where H2 is generated from a nonbiomass energy source, is estimated to provide liquid fuel yields as high as 215 ege/ton of biomass. These estimated yields provide reasonable targets for the development of efficient biomass conversion processes to provide liquid fuel for a sustainable transport sector.

The Purdue group is also developing reactors and catalysts to experimentally demonstrate the concept. In another paper addressing various biofuels processes, including fast-hydropyrolysis-hydrodeoxygenation, that appeared in June’s Annual Review of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering.  The full paper is available at this link.

The new method would produce about twice as much biofuel as current technologies when hydrogen is derived from natural gas and 1.5 times the liquid fuel when hydrogen is derived from a portion of the biomass itself.

Biomass along with hydrogen will be fed into a high-pressure reactor and subjected to extremely fast heating, rising to as hot as 500 degrees C, or more than 900 degrees Fahrenheit in less than a second. The hydrogen containing gas is to be produced by “reforming” natural gas, with the hot exhaust directly fed into the biomass reactor.

Agrawal explains, “The biomass will break down into smaller molecules in the presence of hot hydrogen and suitable catalysts. The reaction products will then be subsequently condensed into liquid oil for eventual use as fuel. The uncondensed light gases such as methane, carbon monoxide, hydrogen and carbon dioxide, are separated and recycled back to the biomass reactor and the reformer.”

Purdue has been pioneering the concept of combining biomass and carbon-free hydrogen to increase the liquid fuel yield.  An older design called “hybrid hydrogen-carbon process,” or H2CAR also use additional hydrogen to boost the liquid-fuel yield. However, H2Bioil is more economical and mobile than H2CAR, Singh said.

Singh continues, “H2Bioil requires less hydrogen, making it more economical.  It is also less capital intensive than conventional processes and can be built on a smaller scale, which is one of the prerequisites for the conversion of the low-energy density biomass to liquid fuel. So H2Bioil offers a solution for the interim time period, when crude oil prices might be higher but natural gas and biomass to supply hydrogen to the H2Bioil process might be economically competitive.”

Regular folks have only a slight impression of what say, the planetary daily oil use of 85 million barrels would look like. The equivalent in biomass to be made into fuel would be an awe-inspiring mound, indeed.

Punching up the total fuel produced is likely the main benefit until political and economic types catch on to the transport issue.  By any measure the Purdue effort is getting somewhere worth going and its something that could go worldwide in local areas as modern farming practices reach further into the under developed world.

This is worthy research from Purdue.  The original article was written by Emil Venere.