Race To The Pump

Chemical & Engineering News
February 14, 2011 Volume 89, Number 7pp. 11-12, 14-17DOI: 10.1021/CEN020911090424
Stephen K. Ritter

Biofuel technologies vie to provide a sustainable supply of transportation fuels
Chemists, chemical engineers, and synthetic biologists have largely met the technical challenge of developing biofuels to supplement and then replace petroleum-derived transportation fuels in the coming decades. For biofuels to reach the U.S. market, however, these technologies have to fit into the existing transportation fuel infrastructure. Every major chemical and petrochemical firm has claimed a stake in the race to biofuel commercialization, as have dozens of start-up companies.

Biofuels have multiple starting points, including sugars, starches, vegetable oil, recycled paper and cardboard, and raw biomass, which can be processed by biological or chemical methods, or both. Whichever ones win, the competing technologies’ versatility ensures that companies will make money, and the country will gain energy security by eliminating dependence on imported oil, as well as climate security by reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

“We all know how to get from the beginning to the end and make biofuels—we’ve all done it,” says James A. Dumesic, a chemical engineer at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. “What you would like to do is put raw biomass in one end and get a ready-to-use fuel out the other end, using as few steps and engineering unit operations as possible. Now, we are to try to get the costs down so it can be affordable. The winning processes, whatever they will be, will need to be as light as possible on the capital investment in order to be practical. Everyone is looking to develop processes that can compete without subsidies.”

Read more