Whatever happened to jatropha, and all those other wonder feedstocks?

Sweet sorghum

We reported today that Benchmark Renewable Energy will develop a 10 million gallon per year advanced ethanol project in Jamaica that will also produce 3 MW of renewable power. The company said that its project would also produce  500K gallons of drop-in aviation fuel and 60,000 gallons per day of fresh, desalinated water. The company, which is evaluating technology packages, said it expects the project to be complete by the end of 2017, and could grow ultimately to a capacity of 20 million gallons, The company said that it will utilize sweet sorghum as a feedstock and will use up to 3000 hectares for feedstock. The proposed project would create up to 140 direct and 500 indirect jobs.

But last June, Ceres announced the a realignment of its business to focus on food and forage opportunities and biotechnology traits for sugarcane and other crops. As part of the realignment, the company will restructure its Brazilian seed operations and is exploring discussions with additional local partners and collaborators to support the continued development and commercialization of its technology in Brazil.

Earlier, the Company announced that due to the economic challenges faced by the Brazilian ethanol industry as well as changes in the global energy market, it had expanded the number of market opportunities available for its technology and products and began prioritizing its working capital in additional areas beyond Brazil.

The Company indicated that its Brazilian operations after implementation of this aspect of the restructuring plan would be focused primarily on sorghum breeding and sugarcane. In particular, the company plans to expand its sugarcane trait development activities for the Brazilian sugarcane market, which Ceres expects to fund, in part, under a grant available from the Brazilian government.

https://staging.biofuelsdigest.com/2015/06/27/ceres-refocuses-on-food-and-forage-options-as-brazilian-bioenergy-results-disappoint/

Switchgrass

In January, a comparative study from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory-based center found that  the natural abilities of unconventional bacteria could help boost the efficiency of cellulosic biofuel production. The analysis demonstrated that under carefully controlled conditions, a microbe called Clostridium thermocellum is twice as effective as fungal enzymes used by industry today. The researchers also tested the different microbes’ performance with minimal pretreatment of the plant materials, indicating it may be possible to reduce or eliminate use of heat and chemicals that make the feedstock accessible to biological processing.

“Eliminating both enzyme addition and conventional pretreatment is a potential game-changer,” said Dartmouth engineering professor Lee Lynd, the study’s corresponding author.

Last October, we reported that a researcher at the University of Texas at Austin received two grants totaling $15 million to study a native prairie grass, including how it can become a sustainable source of bioenergy amid global climate change. Tom Juenger, a professor of integrative biology, will lead scientists from multiple institutions — including federal agencies, universities and the HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology — on two projects researching switchgrass. A five-year grant from the Department of Energy’s Office of Biological and Environmental Research will provide $11 million for the university and $4 million for partner institutions. Additionally, the National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded a four-year grant of $4 million to Juenger and his team. Both grants begin this fall.

On the larger of the two projects, researchers will collect and sequence the genes of hundreds of switchgrass samples to study how genes and a host of environmental factors — including the soil, bacterial communities that live on the plant and in the soil, weather and the size and growth rate of each plant — affect the plant and its potential as a biofuel.

Last August, we reported that Oak Ridge had developed a new process that produces hydrogen from plant sources such as switchgrass. The method converts biomass waste streams into hydrogen through heating and processing in microbe-based electrochemical cells. This approach reduces the use of natural gas during biofuel production, which could help biorefineries lower their greenhouse gas emissions.