The market
Global demand for biodiesel is projected to exceed 10 billion gallons per year by 2015. Currently, 30 countries have implemented biofuel targets and are blending biodiesel with regular gasoline. Europe is moving towards a 7% blend, while Brazil and Indonesia are aiming for 10%. Developing countries account for 50% of global biofuel demand, and their long-term commitment to renewable fuels is demonstrated by the fact that 17% of global biodiesel demand is already concentrated in the Global South. The European Union is the largest consumer of biodiesel, accounting for 44% of demand, closely followed by the Asia-Pacific region at 39%, well ahead of the United States.
Europe's agricultural land comprises 164 million hectares of arable land and 76 million hectares of pasture. Agricultural residues from food and feed crops represent a significant source for biofuel production. The IIASA multilateral research institute in Vienna, Austria, has estimated that up to 246 megatonnes of biomass for biofuel and bioplastics production could be generated from crop residues, which account for 50% of harvested biomass. This residue can be used without the risk of losing fertilizers and soil amendments. This approach to agricultural waste reduces the need for 15 to 20 million hectares of agricultural land that would otherwise have been used for planting crops solely for biofuel production.
Innovation
The demand for fuel (or plastic) derived from biomass is competing with food production. Experts at Cornell University have calculated that fueling an average American car for a year with biodiesel or ethanol would require 11 acres of farmland that would otherwise produce food for seven people. However, this is only part of the problem: producing ethanol from crops requires more energy than burning ethanol produces. The main issue is that 8% ethanol at a purity level of 99.8% must be separated from 92% water. Add to this the harsh reality that corn erodes soil 12 times faster than it can regenerate, and that irrigating corn depletes groundwater 25 times faster than the natural recharge rate, and this system cannot be considered sustainable. If all cars in the United States ran on 100% ethanol, 97% of the US land area would be needed to grow corn as a raw material. It's difficult to explain how plastics or corn-based fuels can be considered sustainable substitutes for fossil fuels.
Carl-Göran Hedén, a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and for many years director of the microbiology department at the Karolinska Institute, introduced the concept of the biorefinery in the early 1960s to break free from the food-fuel and plastics trap. He introduced the concept of processing biomass using the same logic as crude oil, which is cracked and recombined into 100,000 different molecules, while simultaneously producing energy. While many research institutes, such as the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and Wageningen University, pursued the concept, it was Professor Jorge Alberto Vieira Costa of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (FURG) in Brazil who put it into practice, not with plants, but with algae.
In the 1990s, Professor Jorge Vieira launched research on freshwater algae native to the alkaline lake Lagoa Mangueira in southern Brazil to combat malnutrition in the region. His expertise in large-scale production allowed him to expand the program from food security to climate change mitigation. While algae production was a success, a better understanding of the algae's CO2 demand as a nutrient presented a new opportunity: harnessing excess emissions from the local coal-fired power plant and converting the retention basin into an algae production unit. A detailed study of production capacity revealed that an overproduction of algae for human consumption opened the door to extracting lipids from the algae to produce biofuels. Michele Grecque, a colleague of Professor Jorge Vieira, took the biorefinery to the next level and identified the possibility of producing esters (and polyesters) from the residues, thus presenting a strong case for the biorefinery producing food, fuels and plastics from CO2.
The first cash flow
The Brazilian team successfully set up its first unit in Porto Alegre, Brazil, in 2008. Although the project is in its initial phase, the technical and financial capacity to convert greenhouse gases into raw material for these three basic needs has generated the research funds necessary to perfect this approach which would put the debate on algae-based biofuels on a promising track.
Meanwhile, the Italian company Novamont, Europe's largest producer of bioplastics, has evolved from an innovative plastics company to one focused on building biorefineries, the first of which is already operational in Terni, Italy. Following an investment of approximately €100 million in innovative plastics and the establishment of a portfolio of 100 patents, founder and CEO Catia Bastioli has moved forward with this project by creating a joint venture with 600 local farmers who supply products for local consumption. This strategy, which aims to bring uncultivated land back into production and ensure the processing of all biomass (not just starch and vegetable oil), improves farm income, plant output, and product costs, thus generating multiple cash flows, as envisioned by the blue economy.
The opportunity
The oil, refinery, and petrochemical industries should inspire chemical engineers to seek comparable production methods for complex biomass derivatives. Just as oil is broken down into 100,000 different molecules, biomass should not be produced in self-contained silos, leaving behind vast amounts of waste. The time has come to embrace the concept of biorefineries. Now that initiatives in Brazil and Italy have proven their technical, economic, and social viability, other projects should soon follow.
