The University of British Columbia
UBC - A Place of Mind
The University of British Columbia
UBC News
  • Home
  • News Tips
  • Arts & Humanities
  • Business, Law & Society
  • Science, Health & Technology
  • University News
  • Contacts
  • Services
    • Services for Journalists
    • Services for Faculty
Home / 2012 / January / 03 / From the Forest to the Highway: How close are we to advanced biofuels?
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)

From the Forest to the Highway: How close are we to advanced biofuels?

Jan 3, 2012 - by By Jack Saddler, Professor and Head of the Forest Products Biotechnology/Bioenergy Group, UBC, Faculty of Forestry

Professor Saddler is a speaker in the AAAS symposium Food, Feed, and Fuel: Optimizing Economic and Sustainable Biofuel Production, Friday, Feb. 17, 1:30 – 4:30 p.m.

Current biofuels derived from sugar cane or starch crops such as corn and wheat have fostered an ongoing food versus fuel debate. This has caused many groups to focus on finding ways to make use of nature’s biggest source of sugars, which is the cellulose in all plants, as a biofuel feedstock, rather than using food crops.

But what stands in the way of making advanced biofuels a reality such that “from the forest to the highway” can be achieved is the ingenuity of Mother Nature herself.

Although both cellulose and starch are made from glucose, nature designed starch (found in potatoes, rice, corn, wheat, etc.) to be broken down easily while cellulose (found in plants, cotton, etc.) does not break down readily at all!

Mother Nature makes it hard to break down plant cellulose

Breaking down cellulose by the mechanisms that decay organisms such as fungi and bacteria use takes too long. If a tree does fall in the forest it typically takes years if not decades for it to finally be metabolized by the myriad of organisms involved in the “deconstruction” process.

The bioconversion sector hopes to make use of the many enzymes that exist in nature to access and use the sugars within biomass. The challenge is to do this while minimizing capital and operational costs while making sure, through tools such as Life Cycle Analyses (LCA), that advanced biofuels production is environmentally sound.

The Forest Products Biotechnology/Bioenergy group at UBC (www.bioenergy.ubc.ca) has been researching what is now generally called the biorefinery area ever since the first OPEC Oil crisis in the late 1970s. It was one of the first groups to show that some form of pretreatment (opening up and fractionation) is typically required before effective enzymatic breakdown of the cellulose can occur.

Steam explosion is a promising method

One of the challenges is to recover the other two main components of biomass, the lignin and hemicellulose, in a useable form while at the same time “opening up” the cellulose so that the enzymes can more effectively break it down to glucose. Building on the UBC group’s familiarity and experience with pulping processes, methods such as “steam explosion” have been developed and are now being commercialized by many of the companies building demonstration plants around the world.

At the same time, by working with the world’s biggest enzyme company, Novozymes, we have been able to develop various “enzyme cocktails” that are more effective on particular biomass materials such as the hundreds of thousands of tons of mountain pine beetle-killed trees in B.C., Alberta, Idaho and Colorado.

Good progress continues to be made in both better understanding the fundamental mechanisms involved in biomass deconstruction and helping drive down the costs. These advancements mean that the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) “Biofuel Road Map” ( www.IEA.org ) prediction of advanced biofuels being commercially viable by 2020 could very likely become a reality.

Find other stories about: AAAS, sustainability

“The IEA predicts advanced biofuels will be commercially viable by 2020.”

News Tips

News Tips

Looking for story ideas?
Check out our latest News Tips!

Find UBC Experts

An information source that gives journalists access to UBC’s expertise.

Making a Difference

COVID-19

Learn how UBC is rallying to support Canada's response to COVID-19.

Explore

  • Arts & Humanities
  • Business, Law & Society
  • Science, Health & Technology
  • University News
  • Q&As
  • Media Advisories
  • Latest News

Tweets by @ubcnews

My Tweets
Subscribe & receive news by e-mail View UBC's Okanagan News Room
    
Public Affairs
310 - 6251 Cecil Green Park Road
Vancouver, BC Canada V6T 1Z1
Tel 604 822 6397
Fax 604 822 2684
Website http://news.ubc.ca
Email public.affairs@ubc.ca
Find us on
    
Back to top
The University of British Columbia
  • Emergency Procedures |
  • Terms of Use |
  • Copyright |
  • Accessibility
loading Cancel
Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
Email check failed, please try again
Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.