I thought at the time that U.S. President Barack Obama’s appointment of Steven Chu as Secretary of Energy could prove to be interesting.
Chu won a share of the Nobel Prize in physics in 1997 while a professor of physics and molecular and cellular biology at the University of California at Berkeley. He’s a scientist and not a bureaucrat or loyal political crony and has been a noted champion for research into alternative energy and the creation of a global “glucose economy.” The oil lobby is not his biggest fan. Now it looks like some of the scientific hunches he’s played as secretary may be paying off.
Last week, Chu made an announcement about isobutanol. I’ve written about the stuff as a far-out, too good to be true biofuel. It’s like ethanol but much better.
Butanol, like ethanol, is an alcohol, but with two more carbon atoms per molecule. Butanol is also more energy-dense, more tolerant of water and less corrosive than ethanol. It looks like it could be a direct one-for-one substitute for petroleum-based gasoline.
The problem has been that clean-burning isobutanol (made from biomass or waste) has been so difficult and expensive to produce. That’s where Stephen Chu comes in. He announced last week that the U.S. Department of Energy along with scientists from the University of California have used bacteria to create isobutanol. The microbe, clostridium celluloyticum, naturally breaks down plant matter to produce isobutanol in one simple and cheap step as opposed to the complex process required by traditional biofuel production.
“This is a perfect example of the promising opportunity we have to create a major new industry – one based on bio-material such as wheat and rice straw, corn stover, lumber wastes and plants specifically developed for bio-fuel production that require far less fertilizer and other energy inputs. But we must continue with an aggressive research and development effort,” Chu said.
Isobutanol has a heat value higher than ethanol and close to gasoline. The hope is it can run unmodified gasoline engines in the future.
The problem with biofuels comes down to how much energy it takes to create the stuff compared to the amount of energy it actually produces. With feed stocks like corn, the plant matter must be grown and fertilized and transported, which requires fossil fuels. Converting waste with bacteria beats those problems but until now no one has found the right bugs to do the job.
If waste turns into fuel rather than going to landfills, it a true win-win. Plus there’s likely to be a lot less consumer resistance. Butanol is less corrosive than ethanol, which means it’s easier on engines and tests have shown that butanol gives gas powered cars better fuel economy than gasoline or ethanol.
Don’t expect any overnight changes in petroleum’s near-monopoly, but it is encouraging to know that some of the brightest people in science are on the case.
I like writing about all the cool new cars with cool new technologies, but the path to The Green Highway, I believe, is more about new fuels than new cars. Isobutanol and Stephen Chu’s scientists might get us there.
