Some motorists are old enough to remember the days when you could pump gasoline at a cost of USD1 a gallon. Those days are long gone, probably never likely to return.KauschBut don’t say that to Dr. Albert Kausch a world-renowned researcher at University of Rhode Island, who has a goal – to produce a USD1 a gallon fuel to power motor vehicles.
The fuel won’t be gasoline but ethanol, a form of alcohol that burns more cleanly than gasoline and produces fewer emissions including carbon dioxide, a major greenhouse gas that is contributing to climate change.
Ethanol is already blended with gasoline in low percentages to reduce dependence on foreign oil. In this country, most of the ethanol is produced from corn and critics of the practice, which is subsidised by a 51-cent per gallon tax credit, say the process suffers from a “net negative energy balance” – in short, the amount of energy it yields is significantly lower than the amount of energy needed to produce it when compared to other alternatives. Some of the common alternatives for production of ethanol are sugar and soy. Yet another alternative is switchgrass, a prairie perennial that once covered vast amounts of the country from Buffalo to Denver on relatively marginal land.
President Bush mentioned switchgrass as a potential source of ethanol in his State of the Union addresses in 2006 and again this year.
Kausch says it has great potential and with his Project Golden Switchgrass, he is out to develop a genetically modified switchgrass that will produce more bang for the energy buck.
“Switchgrass is a great solution,” he says, noting that because the grass can grow on marginal lands, it will not compete for food crop lands. The grass also has an extensive root system and a stand should last 20 years.
Among the goals of the project is the development of a switchgrass that is both sterile (a gene has been developed to that end already) and resistant to herbicides. Ideally the developed grass will also be drought, salt and cold tolerant. Kausch plans on having field trials on the modified grasses in two years.
Kausch also intends to develop highly efficient enzymes that are capable of breaking down the cellulose in the switchgrass, a key step in the production of ethanol. These new, novel and highly efficient enzymes, developed through biotechnology, will replace the low efficiency, fungal enzymes that are currently used in the process of cellulose breakdown. He’s pursuing this endeavor with a group of Brown University scientists.
Switchgrass that is available commercially today is capable of producing ethanol for about USD2.70 a gallon, says Kausch, adding that if the genetically modified switchgrass project is a success, the cost could come down to USD1 a gallon.
While there are ethanol blends available now, greater and more efficient production of ethanol will make it possible to run motor vehicles on 100 percent ethanol, provided that engine manufacturers can develop or modify engines to operate at that level.
Not everyone is in as much love with switchgrass. An oil industry newsletter, the Oil Drum, published in 2006, threw cold water on the switchgrass solution. The newsletter contended that to produce more biomass, the grass would have to be fertilised, that planting switchgrass on marginal land will not produce as much biomass as is predicted, that stands of the perennial need to be reseeded every
10 years and that if the seeds are genetically modified someone will have them patented and thus they will be more expensive to buy. Harvesting and transporting the plant material to ethanol plants will be cost factors as well, the newsletter stated.
But the published criticism against using switchgrass was not absolute. The publication admitted its analysis of the situation “may be applicable in the near term only. Before long, currently unanticipated developments in bioengineering and nanotechnology may lead to entirely new ways of processing biomass…” The article concluded with a warning that alternative fuels may be the long-term answer but that there is a short term crisis if oil production has indeed reached its peak and “there is likely to be significant turmoil and hardship in the interim.”
Despite such criticisms, Kausch is optimistic about success.
“Everyone in the project feels (developing a new switchgrass) can be more cost effective, both the lowland and upland varieties,” he says. “We are right at the starting gate and we’re going to rev things up.”
