Biofuel News

Biofuel buses on their way to Sweden

The streets of Sweden will soon receive an influx of biofuel buses after Scania received an order for 158 buses from public transport company Keolis Sverige.

Around 123 urban and suburban buses will be used in the greater Stockholm area, with the rest posted elsewhere. Scania had previously delivered both ethanol and biogas fuelled vehicles to the company and the new buses are expected to be equipped with engines for renewable fuels ethanol and rapeseed methyl ester.

There are significant environmental benefits to the vehicles too as compared to using a conventional diesel engine they reduce carbon dioxide emissions by around 70 per cent with ethanol and 64 per cent with rapeseed methyl ester.

The vision is that Keolis Sverige will use sustainable transport to double transit ridership in Swedish cities and hopes to have around 60 per cent of its 2,000 buses running on renewable fuels by the second half of 2011.

Scania meanwhile has released its ethanol buses to countries including Great Britain, Spain, Italy, Belgium and Norway; and has delivered around 800 ethanol buses to date.

Deliveries of the buses in Sweden will take place from April-July with operations to begin between June and August.

Biofuel grasslands better for birds than ethanol staple corn, researchers find

Developing biofuel from native perennials instead of corn in the Midwest's rolling grasslands would better protect threatened bird populations, Michigan State University research suggests.

Federal mandates and market forces both are expected to promote rising biofuel production, MSU biologist Bruce Robertson says, but the environmental consequences of turning more acreage over to row crops for fuel are a serious concern.

Ethanol in America is chiefly made from corn, but research is focusing on how to cost-effectively process cellulosic sources such as wood, corn stalks and grasses. Perennial grasses promise low cost and energy inputs – planting, fertilizing, watering – and the new study quantifies substantial environmental benefits.

"Native perennial grasses might provide an opportunity to produce biomass in ways that are compatible with the conservation of biodiversity and important ecosystem services such as pest control," Robertson said. "This work demonstrates that next-generation biofuel crops have potential to provide a new source of habitat for a threatened group of birds."

With its rich variety of ecosystems, including historic prairie, southern Michigan provided a convenient place to compare bird populations in 20 sites of varying size for each of the three fuel feedstocks. Grassland birds are of special concern, Robertson said, having suffered more dramatic population losses than any other group of North American birds.

In the first such empirical comparison and the first to simultaneously study grassland bird communities across habitat scales, Robertson and colleagues found that bugs and the birds that feed on them thrive more in mixed prairie grasses than in corn. Almost twice as many species made their homes in grasses, while plots of switchgrass, a federally designated model fuel crop, fell between the two in their ability to sustain biodiversity.

The larger the plot of any type, researchers found, the greater the concentration of birds supported. But if grasslands offer conservation and biofuel opportunities, Robertson said, the biodiversity benefits could decrease as biofuel grass feedstocks are bred and cultivated for commercial uniformity.

Robertson was a research associate at MSU's W.K. Kellogg Biological Station in Kalamazoo County during the two-year research project. Today he is an MSU adjunct entomology professor and a postdoctoral fellow at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute Migratory Bird Center in Washington, D.C. His research colleagues included John A. Hannah Distinguished Professor of plant biology Douglas Schemske and research associate Liz Loomis, both at the Kellogg Biological Station; Patrick Doran of The Nature Conservancy in Lansing; and statistician J. Roy Robertson of Battle Creek.

The research was funded by the U.S. Department of Energy Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center with support from The Nature Conservancy's Great Lakes Fund for Partnership in Conservation Science and Economics. Results were recently published in the scientific journal GCB (Global Change Biology) Bioenergy.

Michigan State University has been advancing knowledge and transforming lives through innovative teaching, research and outreach for more than 150 years. MSU is known internationally as a major public university with global reach and extraordinary impact. Its 17 degree-granting colleges attract scholars worldwide who are interested in combining education with practical problem solving.

Yeast strain boosts efficiency of biofuel production

A newly engineered strain of yeast that can simultaneously consume two types of sugar from plants to produce ethanol eliminates major inefficiencies associated with current biofuel production methods.

The sugars are glucose — a six-carbon sugar that is relatively easy to ferment, and xylose — a five-carbon sugar that has been much more difficult to use in ethanol production.

The work to develop the yeast strain was a collaborative effort led by researchers at the University of Illinois, the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the University of California and energy giant BP.

Yeasts feed on sugar and produce various waste products, some of which are useful to humans. One type of yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, has been used for centuries in baking and brewing because it efficiently ferments sugars and in the process produces ethanol and CO₂. The biofuel industry also uses the yeast to convert plant sugars to bioethanol.

But while Saccharomyces cerevisiae is good at feeding on glucose — a building block of cellulose and the primary sugar in plants — it cannot use xylose, a secondary — but significant — component of the lignocellulose that makes up plant stems and leaves. Most yeast strains that are engineered to metabolise xylose do so very slowly.

So Prof Yong-Su Jin from the University of Illinois and his colleagues developed the new yeast to quickly and efficiently consume both types of sugar at once, a process called co-fermentation.

In a painstaking process of adjustments to the original yeast, Jin and his team converted it to one that would consume both types of sugar faster and more efficiently than any strain currently in use in the biofuel industry. In fact, the new yeast strain simultaneously converts cellobiose (a precursor of glucose) and xylose to ethanol just as quickly as it can ferment either sugar alone.

The new yeast strain is claimed to be at least 20 per cent more efficient at converting xylose to ethanol than other strains, making it ’the best xylose-fermenting strain’ reported in any study.

Jin said: ’The cost benefits of this advance in co-fermentation are significant. We don’t have to do two separate fermentations. We can do it all in one pot. And the yield is even higher than the industry standard. We are pretty sure that this research can be commercialised very soon.’

Bosnia EPBiH to kick off hydro, wind projects

German state development bank KfW has agreed to help fund the construction of 25 hydro-power plants in Bosnia worth some 1 billion Bosnian marka ($679 million), Elektroprivreda BiH (EPBiH) said on Friday.

The plants, planned to be built over the next 10 years in central Bosnia, will have a total capacity of 450 megawatts, said Amer Jerlagic, general manager of EPBiH.

KfW bank granted on Thursday 640,000 euros ($847,700) to EPBiH, Bosnia's top power utility, for a feasibility study on the building of the Janjici plant on the river Bosna, the first such plant with capacity of 13.3 MW.

"The signing of this agreement marks the start of the realization of the project '25 hydro-power plants on the river Bosna', the project that one of the European largest banks has expressed readiness to finance," EPBiH said in the statement.

The company also said it has secured a concession from a local government to build Bosnia's first wind-power park at the Podvelezje plateau in the south, which will consist of 16 wind-turbines with a total capacity of 46 megawatts.

"This decision will enable us to use the European Commission funds of 715,000 euros," Jerlagic said.

At the first stage, two wind turbines with capacity of 2 MW each will be built by September 2011, and the remaining 14 turbines with capacity of 3 MW each will be built in 2012 and beyond, the company said.

The plans are part of a 10-billion marka government investment plan into the energy sector by 2018 which includes a series of hydro-power plants, six wind parks and overhauls and construction of new coal-fired plant units aimed to meet future demand and European Union environmental standards.

Bosnia gets 40 percent of its electricity from hydropower, while the rest comes from coal-fired plants.

Unlike other countries in the emerging Balkans, which rely on imports to cover much of their consumption, Bosnia is able to export power, helped by its hydro potential.