Biofuels – Powering the Future

Fossil-fuel reserves are not going to be exhausted in the immediate future; but their total depletion is inevitable.

While the romanticist would date biofuels to be as old as fire with wood being the first biofuel, modern biofuel technologies can be traced to the beginning of the 20th century. Interestingly, Rudolf Diesel, the inventor of the diesel engine, had visualised vegetable oil as fuel for his engine and much of his early labour was on biofuels, the high point being a demonstration in 1900 of an engine running on peanut oil).

Nikolaus August Otto was a great propagator for engines running on ethanol and even Henry Ford is said to have worked on a model running on corn ethanol. The advent of petroleum products shifted the focus away from biofuels purely on the merits of cost, availability and calorific efficacy. With the realisation that fossil fuels are a finite source of energy, as also on account of progressively increasing alarm over environmental issues, the pendulum is gently swinging back towards biofuels. Although the swing started in the 1970s when the Arab world clamped down on crude oil supplies, the initial interest was subdued. In recent years, a growing sense of urgency appears to be pervading the global technological impetus towards progressively enhancing proportions of biofuels.

What Are Biofuels

Biofuels or agro-fuels are sources of bioenergy, a term used to define any form of renewable energy produced from organic materials. They could be broadly categorised into solid, liquid and gas. Of these, the liquid variety has been the one that has caught the fancy of the transportation sector including aviation which is a voracious consumer of highly refined ‘aviation’ fuel. It is customary to classify biofuels into ‘generations’ depending on their level of sophistication. First-generation or conventional biofuels are essentially derivatives from agricultural produce. The leading first-generation biofuel is bioethanol which is obtained from cereals, sugarcane, sugar beet, corn, cassava and sorghum. A preponderance of bioethanol use involves blending with some other fuel such as petrol or diesel. Other fuels in this category are Straight Vegetable Oil (SVO) and biodiesel. The second generation biofuel technology involves biomass conversion through mechanical, thermal, chemical or biochemical processes. The prominent technologies are sugar platform technology involving fragmentation of biomass into its component sugars which are then converted into fuels and thermo-chemical platform which converts biomass thermo-chemically into intermediates that are used as fuels.

Future Trends

Biofuels currently account for about three per cent of fuels used for transportation although use in aviation is negligible due to the high quality standards necessary for acceptable levels of safety. The projection is that the three per cent figure will increase to seven per cent by 2030. Obviously, this trend would be consummated only if ongoing technological advances continue to enhance the sustainability, scalability and affordability of biofuels. In this context, the term third-generation biofuel has been gaining currency in recent times. This expresion refers to biofuels derived from algae which were earlier part of second-generation grouping. However, the elevation of algae biofuels into a higher category is based on the realisation that technology now permits much higher yields from algae than from other resources of biofuel generation. In fact, algae have been used to produce up to 9,000 gallons of biofuel per acre, which is ten times the best traditional feedstock have been able to generate. Those working closely with algae have suggested that yields as high as 20,000 gallons per acre are attainable. The special merit of algae lies in the diversity of fuel they provide. Algae produce an oil that can easily be refined into diesel or even certain components of gasoline. Even more importantly, they can be genetically manipulated to produce ethanol, petrol, biodiesel, butanol, methane, vegetable oil and jet fuel.

Of these, butanol is of great interest because it is quite like petrol, the two have nearly identical energy density. Moreover butanol does not cause engine damage nor does it require engine modification the way ethanol does. With the advent of genetically modified algae, scientists have overcome the earlier difficulties of producing butanol and commercial-scale facilities have been developed for making butanol.

One of the benefits of algae is that it can be cultivated in open ponds, closed loop systems not exposed to atmosphere but using a sterile source of carbon dioxide or in photo-bioreactors, the latter have been set up even in deserts. Even otherwise, algae can be grown almost anywhere including wastewater where the temperature range is warm.

However, there is a problem with algae cultivation. Even when grown in wastewater, algae require large amounts of water, nitrogen and phosphorus. In fact, at the current technological levels, the production of fertiliser to meet the needs of algae used to produce biofuel would generate more greenhouse gas emissions than were to be saved by using algae based biofuel to begin with. It also means the cost of algae-based biofuel is much higher than fuel from other sources. This technological challenge means that largescale production of algae biofuels is unlikely in the near future. Last year, Exxon Mobil, after having spent more than $600 million, concluded that algae biofuels may not be viable for the next 25 years. One other associated problem with algae biofuels is that they are less stable than biodiesel produced from other sources as algae oil is highly unsaturated and thus more volatile, especially at high temperatures. The scientific discourse about algae places a solution to this latter problem within easy reach in contrast to the problem of greenhouse gas emissions explained above.

India and Biofuels

Compulsions of domestic politics in India have always placed high priority on food and energy security. Given India’s vast territorial expanse representing cultivation ground for biofuel feedstock, biofuels present an attractive option. In December 2009, the Government had approved a national policy on which encouraged the use of renewable energy resources as alternative fuels to supplement petrol and diesel for vehicles. It proposed a target of 20 per cent biofuel blending (both biodiesel and bioethanol) by 2017. The government launched the National Biodiesel Mission (NBM) identifying Jatropha as the most suitable treeborne oilseed for biodiesel production. Several public institutions, state biofuel boards, agricultural universities and cooperative sectors are also supporting the biofuel mission in different capacities while the Central and several state governments are providing fiscal incentives for supporting plantations of Jatropha and other non-edible oilseeds.

The biodiesel industry in India is still in infancy despite the fact that demand for diesel is five times higher than that for petrol. The government’s ambitious plan of producing sufficient biodiesel to meet its mandate of 20 per cent diesel blending by 2012 was not realized due to a lack of sufficient Jatropha seeds to produce biodiesel. Several corporations, petroleum companies and private firms have entered into memorandums of understanding with state governments to promote Jatropha plantations on government-owned wastelands but, despite government incentives, the growth has been painfully slow.

According to Sandeep Chaturvedi, President of the Biodiesel Association of India, policy changes likely in 2014 are expected to boost the biodiesel price to around Rs. 55 a litre, a level where Jatropha commercial production becomes viable. For now, only a handful of players, including the Reliance Industries and Hindustan Petroleum seem to be seriously pursuing Jatropha projects, while “the rest have all gone into hibernation,” according to Chaturvedi.

As per Divakar Rao, a member of the Karnataka State Biofuel Development Board, India’s biofuel programme should include biomass products such as corn cobs, sugarcane straws, leaves and fruit debris, which need to be broken down with specialised enzymes and new technologies if the country is to have 20 per cent blending by 2017. India doesn’t yet have a national programme for biomass collection but industry is looking at this potential with interest. Finnish company Chempolis Ltd has signed an initial pact with the Oil and Natural Gas Corporation to build a refinery in India using biomass as feedstock. A private player, Praj Industries has already set up a pilot plant to produce biomass fuel with production costs claimed to be only slightly higher than ethanol made from sugar. Algae.Tec Ltd, a US company, has recently signed an agreement with Reliance Industrial Investments and Holdings Limited for deploying Algae.Tec growth platform technology to produce algae biofuels in India.

Conclusion

Fossil-fuel reserves are not going to be exhausted in the immediate future; but their total depletion is inevitable. As they are steadily used up biofuels are the only foreseeable substitute. The cost of production of biofuels is currently much higher than for fossil-fuels but with ongoing technological advances it will reduce with passage of time. Whether this costcomes down to a level equal to fossil-fuel production cost or not, the replacement of fossil-fuels is inevitable.

Meanwhile, India’s burgeoning oil import bill is a drag on the national economy. Our technological track record is good in selective areas, information technology being one of them. Moreover, the nation’s vast tracts of arable land offer great opportunity as feedstock production grounds. It is not beyond the realm of imagination that given a determined and focused push from the Central Government, India could develop leading edge technologies in the field of biofuel production. Given India’s dependence on oil imports and its faltering energy security, no amount of investment in this technological domain would be excessive.