Bio-Butanol--A Better Liquid Bio-Fuel

Butanol--a four carbon alcohol--is a much better fuel for automobiles than ethanol, a two carbon alcohol. Smarter investors and bio-technologists understand that a longer carbon chain provides better physical properties to a fuel--including higher energy density.

Qi Bioenergy Blog provides a series of articles looking at Bio-Butanol in today's blog postings.

Biobutanol’s Advantages

* Can be easily added to conventional gasoline, due to its low vapour pressure.
* Has an energy content closer to that of gasoline than ethanol so consumers face less of a compromise on fuel economy – this is particularly important as the amount of biofuel in the fuel blend increases.
* Can be blended at higher concentrations than bioethanol for use in standard vehicle engines. Currently biobutanol can blended up to 10%v/v in European gasoline and 11.5%v/v in US gasoline.
* Well suited to current vehicle and engine technologies.
* Does not require automakers to compromise on performance to meetenvironmental regulations.
* Can be used in higher blend concentrations than ethanol without requiring specially adapted vehicles. There is the potential in the future to increase the maximum allowable use in gasoline up to a 16% volume.
* Is less susceptible to separation in the presence of water than ethanol/gasoline blends, and therefore allows it to use the industry’s existing distribution infrastructure without requiring modifications in blending facilities, storage tanks or retail station pumps.
* Is expected to be potentially suitable for transport in pipelines, unlike existing biofuels; as a result, biobutanol has the potential to be introduced into gasoline quickly and avoid the need for additional large-scale supply infrastructure.
___Bio-Butanol

Much more from QiBioenergy, including current biobutanol projects:

1. Butanol Production by E Coli
2. Butanol from E Coli
3. Isobutanol
4. Bio Butanol
5. Butyl Fuel

Here are some abstracts from the work of James Liao at UCLA
The reality of biofuels is much richer and complex than you will read in newspapers, mainstream magazines, or see on television news. Genetic engineering of micro-organisms will eventually allow large-scale production of any liquid or gaseous fuel which we want.

Until such mastery over the genetics of micro-organisms is achieved, the race is on for less masterful but quite effective uses of biology and chemistry, to create petrol alternatives.

Cellulosic Butanol: The Smart Biofuel

It is becoming obvious that corn (maize) ethanol is not a good approach to biofuels. Besides driving up the world price of maize--making many foods less affordable to consumers--and taking up food croplands for growing fuel, the energy yield from maize ethanol simply does not make sense. Fortunately for biofuels, spending on biofuel research has risen to unprecedented levels.

Even better, much of the spending is for projects that actually make sense on many levels. One sensible approach to biofuels, is using genetic engineering to modify micro-organisms to produce butanol from biomass cellulose/lignin.

Researchers at the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science have developed a new method for producing next-generation biofuels by genetically modifying Escherichia coli bacteria to be an efficient biofuel synthesizer. The method could lead to mass production of these biofuels.

The strategy, developed by UCLA professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering James Liao, postdoctoral fellow Shota Atsumi and visiting professor Taizo Hanai, appears in the Jan. 3 issue of the journal Nature....Higher-chain alcohols have energy densities close to gasoline, are not as volatile or corrosive as ethanol, and do not readily absorb water. Furthermore, branched-chain alcohols, such as isobutanol, have higher-octane numbers, resulting in less knocking in engines. Isobutanol or C5 alcohols have never been produced from a renewable source with yields high enough to make them viable as a gasoline substitute.

"These alcohols are typically trace byproducts in fermentation," Liao said. "To modify an organism to produce these compounds usually results in toxicity in the cell. We bypassed this difficulty by leveraging the native metabolic networks in E. coli but altered its intracellular chemistry using genetic engineering to produce these alcohols."

The research team modified key pathways in E. coli to produce several higher-chain alcohols from glucose, a renewable carbon source, including isobutanol, 1-butanol, 2-methyl-1-butanol, 3-methyl-1-butanol and 2-phenylethanol.

This strategy leverages the E. coli host's highly active amino acid biosynthetic pathway by shifting part of it to alcohol production. In particular, the research team achieved high-yield, high-specificity production of isobutanol from glucose.

NextEnergy

UCLA has granted a license for this technology to Gevo.

Achieving a high yield of iso-butanol from glucose is the second step in renewable biofuel that burns in modern gasoline engines--without the need for expensive flex-fuel technology. The first step is achieving high yields of glucose from biomass--cellulose/lignin. Genetic engineering can help with that as well, using designed organisms in mass bioreactors to convert pre-processed biomass residue into glucose to feed into the Step 2 mass bioreactors producing isobutanol.

High yields from both steps in the process are important for cellulosic butanol to become an economic alternative to gasoline. Gevo is a favourite of Richard Branson's Virgin Companies, and Vinod Khosla's Khosla Ventures.

Bio-butanol and Bio-diesel both have excellent long-term potential for replacing fossil fuels in conventional internal combustion engines. Ethanol is for drinking, and should stay that way.

Update 8 Jan 08: For a look at some more ambitious biotech approaches to creating biosynthetic fuels, see here. The truth is, biological systems can make virtually any organic molecules. Which is what I have been saying for a long time. Peak oil, meet biology.

Butanol, Ethanol from Cellulose--Better Cellulases Needed

Corn (maize) ethanol just is not going to work. Despite the efforts of big agricultural interests to promote corn ethanol, the economics simply does not work. But cellulosic butanol/ethanol could easily work, if the right cellulases are found--to break down cellulose into simple fermentable sugars.

A critical step in producing cellulosic ethanol involves breaking down a plant's cell wall material and fermenting the sugars that are released. Current technologies use microbial enzymes called "cellulases" to digest the cellulose in grasses and such rapidly growing trees as poplars. The microbial enzymes have a structure that makes them very efficient at binding to and digesting plant cell wall material called lignocellulose (a combination of lignin and cellulose).

But now, a new class of plant enzymes with a similar structure has been discovered, potentially offering researchers new properties for producing ethanol even more efficiently.

"The bottleneck for conversion of lignocellulose into ethanol is efficient cellulose degradation," said Jocelyn Rose, Cornell assistant professor of plant biology. "The discovery of these enzymes suggests there might be sets of new plant enzymes to improve the efficiency of cellulose degradation."

The paper appears in the April 20 issue of the Journal of Biological Chemistry. Breeanna Urbanowicz, a graduate student in Rose's laboratory, was the paper's lead author.

Source

Here is another approach from UCSD:

To help unlock the cellulose bottleneck, a team of scientists has conducted molecular simulations at the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC), based at UC San Diego. By using “virtual molecules,” they have discovered key steps in the intricate dance in which the enzyme acts as a molecular machine -- attaching to bundles of cellulose, pulling up a single strand of sugar, and putting it onto a molecular conveyor belt where it is chopped into smaller sugar pieces.

“By learning how the cellulase enzyme complex breaks down cellulose we can develop protein engineering strategies to speed up this key reaction,” said Mike Cleary, who is coordinating SDSC’s role in the project. “This is important in making ethanol from plant biomass a realistic ‘carbon neutral’ alternative to the fossil petroleum used today for transportation fuels.”

Source

This field is receiving large infusions of cash, due to the huge potential payoff if biofuels can displace a significant quantity of fossil fuels, in western transportation.

Big Business Discovers Butanol--Renewable Energy Gasoline Substitute

Green Car Congress has posted an article detailing a partnership between oil giant BP, and chemical giant DuPont, to create bio-butanol as a renewable energy additive (and substitute) for gasoline. Butanol can also be added to diesel to reduce pollutants. (see alse the Energy Blog article on the same topic).

BP and DuPont have created a partnership to develop, produce and market next-generation biofuels to help meet increasing global demand for renewable transport fuels.

The two companies have been working together since 2003 and are now ready to bring their first product to market: biobutanol, which will be introduced in the UK in 2007 as a gasoline bio-component.

The companies are leveraging DuPont’s biotechnology and bio-manufacturing capabilities with BP’s fuels technology expertise and market know-how. By pooling their knowledge and expertise, the two companies aim to be the world leaders in the development and production of advanced biofuels, driving the growth of biofuels, which today account for less than two percent of global transportation fuels. Current projections show that biofuels could represent up to 20-30% of the transport fuel mix in key markets.

Bio-butanol. Butanol (C4H10O) is a four-carbon alcohol in widespread use as an industrial solvent, with a US market size of some 370 million gallons per year at a price of about $3.75 per gallon (approximately $1.4 billion).

Originally produced by fermentation starting nearly 90 years ago (using Clostridia acetobutylicum), butanol shifted to becoming a petrochemically-derived product in the 1950s as the price of petrochemicals dropped below that of starch and sugar substrates such as corn and molasses. Virtually all of the butanol is use today is produced petrochemically.

Butanol’s energy content is closer to gasoline than ethanol’s. It is non-corrosive, can be distributed through existing pipelines, and can be—but does not have to be—blended with fossil fuels. Butanol itself could be reformed for hydrogen for use in fuel cells, and the production process itself produces hydrogen. (Earlier post.)

Bio-butanol’s low vapor pressure and its tolerance to water contamination in gasoline blends facilitate its use in existing gasoline supply and distribution channels. It has the potential to be blended into gasoline at larger concentrations than existing biofuels without the need to retrofit vehicles and it offers better fuel economy than gasoline-ethanol blends, improving a car’s fuel efficiency and mileage.

DuPont and BP are currently in the process of carrying out detailed calculations of biobutanol’s greenhouse gases Well-to-Wheel Life Cycle Analysis emission performance. Initial indications are that, on the same feedstock basis, biobutanol can deliver emission reductions that are at least as good as ethanol on the same basis.

Bio-butanol also enhances the performance of ethanol blends in gasoline by, amongst other things, reducing ethanol’s impact on vapor pressure, one of the issues which hampers a wider use of ethanol in existing gasoline distribution channels. Read the rest in the Green Car Congress article, and more at the Energy Blog.

This is the first time that Butanol has gotten this kind of attention from big money interests. It seems that the many advantages of butanol over ethanol are finally coming to the attention of top level executives.

Butanol: A Superior Renewable Energy Substitute for Gasoline

Oil prices hover close to US $70 a barrel. This higher price drives a lot of research into finding substitutes for petroleum fuels. Ethanol is the cause celebre of the news media, but two-carbon ethanol is not nearly as good a gasoline substitute as is butanol, a four-carbon alcohol. Here is more information from Butanol.com:

* Higher energy content (110,000 Btu’s per gallon for butanol vs. 84,000 Btu per gallon for ethanol). Gasoline contains about 115,000 Btu’s per gallon.
* Butanol is six times less “evaporative” than ethanol and 13.5 times less evaporative than gasoline, making it safer to use as an oxygenate in Arizona, California and other states, thereby eliminating the need for very special blends during the summer and winter months.
* Butanol can be shipped through existing fuel pipelines where ethanol must be transported via rail, barge or truck
* Butanol can be used as a replacement for gasoline gallon for gallon e.g. 100%, or any other percentage. Ethanol can only be used as an additive to gasoline up to about 85% and then only after significant modifications to the engine. Worldwide 10% ethanol blends predominate.

Here is a list of the advantages of butanol from Pure Energy Systems:

# Higher energy content than ethanol.
# Not as corrosive as ethanol.
# Uses an air/fuel ratio which is close to that of gasoline. Ethanol does not.
# Can be shipped through existing fuel pipelines where ethanol must be transported via rail, barge or truck.
# Can replace gasoline any percentage up to 100%. Ethanol can only be used up to 85%.
# Gives better mileage than ethanol. (http://www.businessweek.com/autos/content/apr2006/bw20060427_493909.htm?chan=autos_autos%20indexpage_insight)
# Safer to handle than ethanol.
# Will also assist in the conversion of vegetable oils into biodiesel.

Here is a list of butanol advantages from lightparty:

Butanol is a four carbon alcohol. It has double the amount of carbon of ethanol, which equates to a 25 percent increase in harvestable energy (Btu's).

Butanol is produced by fermentation, from corn, grass, leaves, agricultural waste and other biomass.

Butanol is safer to handle with a Reid Value of 0.33 psi, which is a measure of a fluid's rate of evaporation when compared to gasoline at 4.5 and ethanol at 2.0 psi.

Butanol is an alcohol that can be but does not have to be blended with fossil fuels.

Butanol when consumed in an internal combustion engine yields no SOX, NOX or carbon monoxide all environmentally harmful byproducts of combustion. CO2 is the combustion byproduct of butanol, and is considered environmentally 'green'.

Butanol is far less corrosive than ethanol and can be shipped and distributed through existing pipelines and filling stations.

Butanol solves the safety problems associated with the infrastructure of the hydrogen supply. Reformed butanol has four more hydrogen atoms than ethanol, resulting in a higher energy output and is used as a fuel cell fuel.

Butanol is an industrial commodity, with a 370 million gallons per year market with a selling price of $3.75 per gallon.

Hydrogen generated during the butanol fermentation process is easily recovered, increasing the energy yield of a bushel of corn by an additional 18 percent over the energy yield of ethanol produced from the same quantity of corn.

Here are even more advantages for butanol from Environmental Energy Inc.:

Environmental Energy Inc has shown that BUTANOL REPLACES GASOLINE - 100 pct and has no pollution problems, and further proved it is possible to produce 2.5 gallons of butanol per bushel corn at a production cost of less than $1.00 per gallon. There are 25 pct more Btu-s available and an additional 17 pct more from hydrogen given off, from the same corn when making butanol instead of ethanol that is 42 pct more Btu-s more energy out than it takes to make - that is the plow to tire equation is positive for butanol. Butanol is far safer to handle than gasoline or ethanol. Butanol when substituted for gasoline gives better gas mileage and does not pollute as attested to in 10 states. Butanol should now receive the same recognition as a fuel alcohol in U.S. legislation as ethanol.

Besides using butanol as a straight substitute for gasoline, butanol can be blended with diesel or biodiesel and burned in diesel engines. When you combine the processes of producing biodiesel from oil seeds, and butanol from biomass, you can fuel all the vehicles on the highway. Then if you use byproducts of those processes in fuel cells to produce electricity, your overall efficiency goes even higher.

Here is a good article on butanol from Green Car Congress, a more recent article from R-Squared, and also a fine article from Fat Knowledge blog. Be sure to read the comments.

Ramping up butanol infrastructure is a matter of investment and chemical/manufacturing engineering technology. The public relations battle against the ethanol super-giants is another matter. Ethanol is represented by big farm conglomerate money, among other big business interests, and has its hands in government pockets. Government officials listen to ethanol. Butanol is the David against the ethanol Goliath. But Butanol is clearly the better man, so Butanol will eventually win. We should all hope that smaller farm interests will wake up to the possibilities, pool their resources, and put butanol on the main track soon.

Renewable Diesel Energy, Renewable Gasoline

It takes time for a society that is dependent on petroleum fuels to convert to renewable fuels. Fortunately, the cost of petro-oil is high enough now to encourage the development of alternatives. Biodiesel from oil seeds can substitute for petro-diesel, and ethanol or butanol can substitute for gasoline.

Jim at the Energy Blog reports on the Green Star Biodiesel continuous processor biodiesel reactor, which should reduce the costs of producing biodiesel and make it more available.

GSPI Biodiesel Plants have the following competitive advantages:

* All plant design is modularized so additional capacity can be added at minimal cost.
* Speed of construction - plant can be placed in service in 14-16 weeks versus industry standard average of 14 to 18 months.
* Small footprint of plant because of its modularized "continuous flow waterless design" versus industry batch plant design, which also results in lower production and maintenance costs.
* Minimum plant management and operations staff required because plant is automated.
* Proven technology - Industrial size plant operated and produced biodiesel for over three years in Bakersfield, California.
* Minimal permits required from regulatory agencies. Plant requires no wastewater permit, which could take up to one year to obtain and minimum air quality permits.
* The plant design is very energy efficient and reduces energy requirements by over 30% of industry average.
* Lower capital costs by at least 40% compared to biodiesel industry standards. (between $.80 cents per gallon to a high of $1.25 per installed gallon for conventional biodiesel plants)
* Plants require 30 to 40% less energy (increased efficiency) to run motors and pumps.
* Faster achievement of positive cash flow is due to a much shorter time frame to complete construction and permitting.

Since GSPI's Continuous Flow Biodiesel Production (CFBP) system is completely enclosed and waterless, it greatly reduces the time to secure construction permits, which can take a year or longer to obtain. Mr. LaStella, President of GSPI, points out that California is probably the toughest state to obtain air and water discharge permits. Recently, the GSPI CFBP system received the permits to construct a biodiesel plant in California in only eight weeks. Since many cities and towns across the U.S. do not have the expertise to evaluate new biodiesel plants being built in their jurisdiction, they have welcomed the California permit package to save them the need to research this emerging biodiesel technology and save GSPI the time to receive these valuable permits.

The basic production cost to build the reactors has been reduced to only $30,000 per 10-million GPY reactor module. Smaller units will cost even less. This will significantly reduce the costs and time to build biodiesel plants. The prefabricated reactors make it possible to construct plants within 14-18 weeks versus the 14-18 months that is typical for conventional plants. The balance of the infrastructure--which includes land, building, electrical, storage facilities, railroad access and final cleanup of biodiesel--will still be required. More at the source.

Renewable liquid fuels are carbon neutral in terms of the carbon cycle. Whatever CO2 that is released by burning the fuel is later re-absorbed from the atmosphere in the plant that produces the oil seeds.

The same applies to the use of ethanol or butanol for gasoline replacement, as long as the ethanol comes from a renewable source. The hare-brained idea to produce ethanol from coal should be stuffed down the garbage chute.

Butanol is much preferable to ethanol as a liquid gasoline replacement, due to better burning characteristics and much lower corrosion potential. Unfortunately, the microbiological infrastructure for efficiently fermenting butanol is far behind the ethanol micro-infrastructure by thousands of years. I expect significant progress from microbiologists on that front, however.

There is tremendous potential for efficient use of agriculture to produce liquid fuel replacements for petrofuels. Using oil seeds for biodiesel, then using the byproducts from biodiesel to produce ethanol, and finally using the cellulosic waste from the plant itself to ferment either ethanol or butanol. Then, there is always the pig factor.