The great promise of biofuels is hampered by harvesting logistics and high production costs – so an innovative solution is required. NZTE’s Bright Magazine investigates biofuels R&D and investment in New Zealand, and its potential to make a global impact.

Everyone’s doing it. The whole world is trying to find alternatives to the fossil fuels on which we have become so dependent. It’s become an economical as well as environmental imperative.

“There is fuel in every bit of vegetable matter that can be fermented,” said Henry Ford in 1925. “There’s enough alcohol in one year’s yield of an acre of potatoes to drive the machinery necessary to cultivate the fields for a hundred years.”

Although countries are already growing corn, soybeans and sugar cane, the solution to the global oil dependency is not as simple as it sounds. The production of biofuels brings with it a range of cost and environmental implications of its own. Utilising conventional crops for energy takes a toll on land resources, and in many cases the cost of harvest and production outstrips that of petroleum fuel.

Turning the biofuels concept into a real replacement for dwindling petroleum oil supplies requires innovative solutions. In New Zealand, there are several organisations researching biofuel technologies, to meet domestic demand for transport fuels and open doors to economical biofuel production in other markets around the world.

Research is focusing on two types of biofuels for transport: biodiesel, to blend with diesel, and bio-ethanol to blend with petrol.

Baa-baa, black gold

Biodiesel is produced by converting vegetable or animal oils into organic compounds that behave like ‘normal’ diesel. New Zealand has never been a big producer of oily crops, but our propensity for growing livestock leaves us with a fair supply of tallow, extracted from the fat of sheep and cattle.

Auckland-based BioDiesel-Oils NZ is the furthest along in the production of biodiesel in New Zealand. In 2004, the company entered an agreement with British Petroleum (BP) to perform laboratory tests and vehicle trials on the biodiesel it produced from tallow. The product met international standards as well as those of New Zealand and the United States.

To be commercially viable, though, the company needed greater production than the 11 million litres its R&D plant in East Tamaki can make each year. A plant in Waharoa will have the capacity to produce 60 million litres of biodiesel per year and, depending on resource consent, be functioning by the end of 2007. A second plant is planned for the South Island. Collectively the two plants can satisfy the government’s biofuels content mandate of 3.4 percent by 2012.

International interest in BioDiesel-Oils NZ’s technology has come from other countries with large-scale meat production, but the company is not selling: it’s looking for joint ventures with producers of raw materials.

Meanwhile, UK-based Argent Energy is investigating New Zealand as a site to build a tallow-to-bio-diesel refinery. In mid-February, Shell New Zealand and Caltex signed a letter of intent with Argent in preparation for meeting the biofuels sales target announced by the government.

While not committing to building a refinery quite yet, managing director Dickon Posnett is optimistic that New Zealand will be looked upon favourably when he reports back to his board in the UK.

The great green hope

Another potential source of bio-diesel is micro-algae, which is capable of producing 30 times more oil per acre than corn and soybean crops. One of the problems, though, is gaining access to uniform sources of algae that can be dependably turned into high quality diesel. Therefore, farmed algae may prove to be a likely source.

Marlborough’s Aquaflow Bionomic claims to be the first in the world to commercially produce bio-diesel fuel from algae sourced from sewage ponds.

Found in the forest

On the petrol side of the biofuels equation is bio-ethanol – formed from the fermentation of sugar or starch into alcohol. Crops such as corn and sugar cane are often used as feedstocks for ethanol, but New Zealand does not have the space for such large-scale production. Therefore it requires another solution.

Fermenting lactose produced by Anchor Ethanol, a subsidiary of Fonterra, is one possible source, however the raw material of lactose is proving more valuable to the company for other uses.

AgriGenesis spin-out BioJoule was launched in 2006 with a commitment to farming the woody crop salix. When the shrub is harvested, it can provide cellulose for the production of transport ethanol, among other uses.

Crown Research Institute Scion, along with AgResearch, has partnered with San Diego-based Diversa on a feasibility study to convert a pulp and paper mill to turn its waste into biofuel. The study is focusing on New Zealand tree stocks, energy grasses and Diversa’s enzyme technology.

Finally, local company LanzaTech is adapting international technologies to make bioethanol from maize, and is also working to develop a technology to use microbes to convert carbon monoxide and other industrial gases into ethanol.

Making use of high volume industrial waste has pricked international ears. Watch this space.

Source: “In Search of the Better Oil” by Bette Flagler, Issue 21, bright, March/April 2007

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