[Graeme]

If you look at the link above, you will see that there are at least 50 companies involved in bioenergy development and commericalization. The top 50 are listed.

[Graeme]

Unlocking lignin for sustainable biofuel

Turning trees, grass, and other biomass into fuel for automobiles and airplanes is a costly and complex process. Biofuel researchers are working to change that, envisioning a future where cellulosic ethanol, an alcohol derived from plant sugars, is as common and affordable at the gas station as gasoline.

The key to making this vision a reality? Unraveling the tightly wound network of molecules -- cellulose, hemicellulose, and lignin -- that make up the cell wall of plants for easier biofuel processing.

"BESC scientists created lots of different lignins randomly through genetic modification," Smith said. "They found one that worked for them, but they wanted to know why it worked."

To find the answer, Smith's team turned to Titan, a 27-petaflop supercomputer at the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF), a DOE Office of Science User Facility.

Cellulose, a complex carbohydrate made up of glucose strands, comprises nearly half of all plant matter. It gives plants their structure, and it's the critical substance needed to make cellulosic ethanol. To break down cellulose, one must get past lignin, a waste product of biofuel production that requires expensive treatments to isolate and remove. By throwing a wrench in the plant cell's lignin assembly line, BESC scientists found they could boost biofuel production by 38 percent.

sciencedaily

BioMim project seeks to mimic chemistry of brown rot fungus to improve biorefining

[Carnot]

Sadly more blah on cellulosic biofuel. Almost a year on from my illness where has cellulosic ethanol production soared to. No-one really knows.millions of gallons here and millions of gallons there are all claimed in the investors information packs. But how much is really being produced? Who is making a profit?
The truth is and will remain that very little cellulosic ethanol is being produced and no company is making an adequate return on their investment.

If this process is viable it would be working by now. It has had over 100 years of so called development which comprehensively proves that it SUCKS. Big time.

[Graeme]

This post provides further information related to my post about United Airlines above.

Oil prices are down, so why is United Airlines buying into biofuels? Symbolic or sound strategy?

United Airlines has announced a USD30 million equity investment in alternative fuels developer Fulcrum BioEnergy. The company is pioneering the development and commercialisation of low-cost sustainable aviation biofuel.

The buy-in is the single largest investment by a US airline in alternative fuels and marks United as a leader in the US aviation industry in advancing low-cost aviation biofuels and greenhouse gas emissions reduction.

Under the long-term agreement with Fulcrum, United will have the opportunity to purchase at least 90 million gallons p/a of sustainable aviation fuel, for a minimum of 10 years. There is also a secondary agreement, which could see United and Fulcrum jointly develop up to five biofuels projects located near major United hubs. This is expected to have the potential to produce up to 180 million gallons of fuel p/a.

Fulcrum uses cheaply available municipal solid waste as a feedstock to produce a drop-in biofuel that meets United’s technical requirements. A similar method is already being used with some success with British Airways’ partnership with Solena at London City Airport. Fulcrum already has a 10-year deal with Cathay Pacific, to supply large volumes of low-carbon jet fuel, equivalent to around 2% of Cathay’s annual fuel consumption.

On the surface of it buying into an alternative fuel maker at the present time seems something of a strange move for the airline. Oil prices turned decisively downward in 2H2014 and have been bumping along at between USD45-65 per barrel for the past six to seven months. Long-term forecasts indicate only moderate price growth out to 2020, although oil prices are notoriously volatile.

The key to this agreement is that the biofuel is to be purchased at "a cost that is competitive with conventional jet fuel." At present, approved alternative and renewable aviation fuels cost anywhere from a third more per gallon to several dozen times the price of conventional jet kerosene, depending on the feedstock, generation techniques used and scale of production.


Outside the potential cost advantages, the deal also has significant potential to reduce United Airlines' greenhouse gas emissions. Fulcrum advertises its renewable jet fuel as providing a greater than 80% reduction in lifecycle carbon emissions when compared to conventional jet fuel.

More here

[Carnot]

It might have been a good idea if you had updated yourself on two aspects of this post. Firstly The BA Solena project is not yet built. Originally announced in 2010 and again in 2012 when a 2015 completion date was given. As of April 2014 a press release announced that a site had been found in Essex, which is the old Coryton refinery site. Completion was stated as 2017. I fly over this site nearly every week and to date I do not see much construction activity. Maybe they will start soon. But as every month passes the chances of a 2017 completion recede.

Secondly, I just wonder if the price of Jet Kero is dampening their enthusiasm. BA, just like United put a clause in the deal that states the price of the fuel must be cost competitive. No surprise there. In a tough business like air travel they cannot afford to pay over the odds for jet fuel. The punters who put their bums on the seats are more interested in the cost of the seat than if the fuel is green(or supposedly green). Only those with a conscience about the environment would pony up the cash to fly green, but they do not fly anyway. So each project is doomed from the outset.

Expect BA- Solena and United- Fulcrum to be rather quiet over the next few years and these schemes fade away to nothing. Once again, do you homework. This is an FT process based on a variable feedstock. FT is difficult to pay out even on cheap gas feedstocks. It does not scale down very well, and this is a Bonsai plant. It will never pay out on this type of feedstock. You cannot beat the laws of thermodynamics.

[Graeme]

OK. Let's update myself. I'm into finding out more about this industry since I'm prompted to do so. You are quite right. The plant isn't built yet but BA has agreed to purchase the product from the plant when it is completed in 2017.

First to step into the waste-to-fuel arena was British Airways (BA), which in 2012 signed an investment and offtake agreement with Solena Fuels to build GreenSky London venture to convert 640,000 tons of municipal solid waste (MSW) a year to liquid fuels using high-temperature gasification and the Fischer-Tropsch (F-T) process. The plant, at a former refinery in Thurrock, east of London, is to be operational by 2017. BA has agreed to buy all 16 million gallons of jet fuel produced annually by the plant for 11 years—about 2% of its total consumption, but enough to support operations at nearby London City Airport.

If you look in the same article, you'll see that other airlines (Cathy Southwest Etihad) have signed contracts for delivery of fuels derived from a similar waste source. If you care to look further you will see that other airlines are purchasing biofuel made from other feedstocks. Rather than fading away, I see aviation biofuels expanding in the coming years as the following article points out.

Back in 1927, 100,000 people flooded Le Bourget Airport in Paris to greet Charles Lindbergh as he completed the first solo, non-stop, transatlantic crossing by plane. Now, it’s done by dozens of pilots every day, who have no one to meet them except the driver for their offsite, low-cost motel. Sigh, it’s the nature of news.

In the world of aviation biofuels, the bands and the bunting are rolling out less frequently. But mostly, because the sector has moved out of a noise-filled early R&D phase and is heading towards deployment. Someday, aviation biofuels will be as routine as topping off a fuel farm, and the world will have changed so completely that no will think about it any more than we think about the miracle of the wheel.

For a few years, readers became accustomed to a flurry of R&D partnerships, market studies, financing announcements, technical milestone reveations and sexy certification efforts where airlines seem to fly all over the place for a handful of flights demonstrating that planes won’t fall out of the sky with aviation biofuels.

Now, the radio silence descends as the process of detailed engineering of plants begins, construction gets underway, followed by the inevitable yet interminable commissioning period where a plant may spend up to 3 years reaching nameplate capacity and steady-state operations for a novel processing technology using novel feedstocks.

We’re some distance from aviation biofuels as “business as usual” but we do see quite a bit more “in business” activity.

Please read the rest of this article because it clearly demonstrates how far the commercial and military aviation biofuel industry has come during the last year 2014-2015. It is quite different to the way you portray it. In fact, rather than fading, it's growing.

[Carnot]

Graeme,

They have not even broken ground at Thurrock. It is just stoney silence which does not bode well. 2017 will be a miracle if ever I saw one. 640 kta of MSW. Imagine the logistics of moving and handling all that waste, not to mention the waste that will be produced, along with a lot of carbon dioxide.

In both cases there is a competitive clause on cost. Who is going to invest in a risky plant like this, even if they get the feedstock for free and with a subsidy to avoid landfill. The process has never been built at such a scale and if it can be built at published cost, which I doubt, it still remains to be seen if it can produce jet fuel day in day out. I doubt it due to the variable nature of MSW.

I would not use the military as an example. Military spends are always underestimated and the final bill is always much higher. Remember it is the tax payer who pays the bill for the military ( by government extortion) not the passenger with his bum on the aircraft seat.

The airline industry is clutching at straws. It is required to cut carbon emissions but cannot see away forward. That is why they are looking tat this nonsense. Sorry but it is doomed form the start. It just will never ever be cost competitive however you look at it.

[Graeme]

This from the GreenSky website:

Solena Fuels in partnership with British Airways has committed to building the world’s first facility to convert landfill waste into jet fuel. The chosen location for this innovative project is the Thames Enterprise Park, part of the site of the former Coryton oil refinery in Thurrock, Essex. The site has excellent transport links and existing fuel storage facilities.

This ground-breaking fuel project is set to revolutionise the production of sustainable aviation fuel. Approximately 575,000 tonnes of post-recycled waste normally destined for landfill or incineration will instead be converted into 120,000 tonnes of clean burning liquid fuels using Solena’s innovative integrated technology. British Airways has made a long-term commitment to purchase all 50,000 tonnes per annum of the jet fuel produced at market competitive rates.

Let's repeat what I said earlier because you simply cannot read. The aviation biofuel industry is set to take off.

Price is Pain Point in March to Commercialization

More than 1,500 trial flights have been flown using some blend of jet fuel and biofuel, typically a 50/50 split (the most allowed by current industry standards). However, no commercially viable aviation biofuels currently exist. Jet fuel accounts for about 30 percent of the industry’s operating costs.

In the U.S., the Federal Aviation Administration is aiming for the aviation industry (both commercial and military) to use one billion gallons of sustainable jet biofuel starting from 2018, “with the intent of encouraging commercial production,” according to a recent GAO report. That’s about 5 percent of the predicted fuel consumption for military and domestic airlines in 2018, the FAA told GAO investigators.

“Achieving price competitiveness for alternative jet fuels is the overarching challenge to developing a viable market,” the GAO report says. The report said the most frequently cited impediments to competitive pricing were “high development costs and the uncertainty of federal regulations and policies” and that “federal activities are needed to help advance the alternative jet-fuels industry.”

The GAO report also states that alternative jet fuels would need a subsidy ranging from 35 cents to $2.86 per gallon to be price competitive with conventional jet fuels in 2020.

There are more than 20 biofuel development projects in the U.S. alone, according to a U.S. Agriculture Department report. “These projects utilize a variety of feedstock and process technologies to produce renewable fuels, and several have the potential to produce aviation biofuel,” the report says. “However, these projects need additional funding to support biofuel development in the near term.”

Research shows that so-called “green diesel,” made from recycled animal fat, used cooking oil and inedible corn oil, and already used in for ground transportation, can power aircraft, too. Unlike other biofuels, green diesel is available today in commercial quantities, about 800 million gallons a year, from the U.S., Europe and Singapore, but that’s still little more 1 percent of the total needed by the thirsty global aviation industry. Another huge selling point: green diesel, at about $3 per gallon with government subsidies, is cost competitive with jet fuel. Green diesel is an important step in the evolution of viable sustainable aviation biofuels, Julie Felgar, managing director of Boeing Commercial Airplanes Environmental Strategy and Integration, told the Chicago Tribune. “A few years ago, people said this was a complete longshot," she said. "We still have a lot of work to do, but it will be an easier road to travel."

Despite the challenges, “the race is on to develop viable and cost-competitive supply chains using sustainably sourced feedstocks that can be readily processed into finished fuels on an industrial scale” for aviation and maritime biofuels, according to Navigant Research.

Led by North America, production capacity of aviation and maritime biofuels is expected to reach 3.3 billion gallons by 2024, representing 1.5 percent of total aviation and maritime consumption, the Navigant Research report says. The report forecasts that a cumulative total of 18.2 billion to 19.6 billion gallons of renewable aviation and maritime biofuel could be produced between 2014 and 2024.

All that advancement won’t come cheap. It’ll cost—conservatively—an estimated $30 billion to $40 billion by 2020 to reach the IATA’s “aspirational target” of 6 percent of global jet fuel supply met by advanced biofuels,” says the Navigant report.

“[B]iofuels will account for a low proportion of global aviation consumption before 2020, but could make a significant contribution over a longer time horizon,” says an FAA Center of Excellence report. The report says that a high price on carbon, combined with some “optimistic assumptions” could result in 100 percent biofuel usage by airlines globally by the early 2040s. “With no carbon price and slow development of biofuel technologies, biofuels account for 3% of aviation fuel use in 2030 and 37% in 2050,” the report says.

Boeing, Japanese Aviation Industry Unveil Biofuel 'Roadmap' to 2020 Olympics

[Carnot]

Fine then. Invest your money and loose your shirt.

I can read and assimilate information pretty well thank you. Moreover I know bullshit when I read it. All you have done is cut and paste writings form those who want to promote something that has scant chance of success but for them is a means to an end.

Despite showing you the evidence on Solaslime you still do not seem to understand a profit and loss situation. Solaslime is bleeding money. Fact. Kior went spectacularly bankrupt as I forecast. Others will follow. Airlines are clutching at straws and written in the fine print is the competitive pricing clause.

Written in your BS cut and paste is the incentive sentence. All we need is a taxpayer subsidy. That says it all. It will never ever be price competitive just like all the other so called biofuels. Without taxpayer subsidies it collapses like a house of cards.

Wake up Graeme. Rather than cut and paste BS why don't you just try and understand the thermodynamics, the technical details and the difference between profit and loss. There are plenty on the forum that are prepared to go into detail.

[Graeme]

I only have confidence in the statements quoted from the FAA Center of Excellence report, and the recent announcement made by Boeing and the Japanese Aviation industry.

Huge potential of grazing land for biofuel surge

Converting grazing land into fields to grow crops for biofuels could provide up to 30 per cent of the world’s energy needs, according to a report.

The report says at least 500 million hectares are available for sustainable biofuel production even when rising food demand, growing urbanisation and the desire to preserve forest and protected lands are taken into account. Most of this land is in Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa, and is being used for low-intensity animal grazing, it says.

The study predicts that, if biofuel technology continues to develop rapidly, only around 50-200 million hectares would be needed to grow the biomass needed for biofuels to provide 30 per cent of global energy by 2050. A lot of this land could come from arid, low-intensity grazing lands, which could instead be used to, for example, grow agave for ethanol production, the authors write.

scidev

[Graeme]

You didn't read the article properly.

A lot of this land could come from arid, low-intensity grazing lands

Glaucia Mendes Souza, a biologist at the University of Sao Paulo and one of the report’s editors, says mixing land uses would help developing countries integrate biofuel production into their existing agricultural systems. “By combining forestry with bioenergy production or integrating areas of grasslands and woodlands, countries would be able to minimise the effects of climate change but not compromise food safety,” she says.

Around 87 per cent of global energy demand is currently met by climate-altering fossil fuels, says the report.

But it points out that “inefficiently used land, extensive pastures, degraded lands and excess agricultural capacity” stand in the way of growing more biofuels, especially in developing countries.

And it is well known that the oil and gas industry is the most corrupt on the planet.

[Graeme]

You missed the second part of the following sentence:

A lot of this land could come from arid, low-intensity grazing lands, which could instead be used to, for example, grow agave for ethanol production, the authors write.

[Graeme]

OK. I'll take another extract from the article. I'll read their report; link at bottom of article.

These conclusions are based on an analysis of almost 2,000 scientific studies and assessments on global land use, led by researchers from the Sao Paulo Research Foundation in Brazil and the Scientific Committee on Problems of the Environment, a global network that reviews scientific knowledge on environmental issues. Glaucia Mendes Souza, a biologist at the University of Sao Paulo and one of the report’s editors, says mixing land uses would help developing countries integrate biofuel production into their existing agricultural systems.

I've discovered that the scope is much broader than the article discusses, and there are 137 international authors! This from page 80:

In the third category of agro-ecosystems, arid systems, biomass/bioenergy production has not been implemented but may be possible by using water-efficient and drought tolerant plants such as Agave (Figure 3.6) and Opuntia as dedicated energy crops (Sommerville et al. 2010).

And see page 322. Glad I found this report (779 pages); there's a lot of detail in it.

[Graeme]

Sorry, you and Carnot have zero credibility to my mind. Did you actually read the report I referred to?