The Future of Renewable Energy: Frequently Asked Questions
Today, Auburn University's Natural Resources Management & Development Institute joined several other public and private partners to debut its new mobile gasification unit. Following is a series of frequently asked questions about the unit and other efforts under way at NRMDI to educate Alabamians about the merits of renewable energy, especially as they relate to Alabama's bioenergy potential.
Auburn University and the Future of Renewable Energy: Frequently Asked Questions
What role is Auburn University’s Natural Resources Management & Development Institute serving in the push toward renewable energy alternatives?
The institute is striving to provide Alabama entrepreneurs and municipal leaders with the critical technology and technical skills needed to chart their own independent paths toward renewable energy. NRMDI is focusing especially on technologies that will help Alabama capitalize on the newest and potentially most lucrative sources of renewable energy, particularly biomass.
What is biomass?
Biomass is derived from an array of sources, including wood, switchgrass and agricultural waste, all of which are generated in abundance throughout Alabama. Many of these biomass feedstocks are generated by Alabama’s multibillion-dollar row-crop, forestry and poultry industries as well as from by-products created from the management of municipal green wastes.
Why is biomass often touted as a vast improvement over corn-derived ethanol?
Corn-derived ethanol, which currently dominates so much of the U.S. energy landscape, is widely perceived only as a partial solution to the nation’s energy problems. Indeed, as a recent issue of National Geographic aptly observes, “It’s easy to lose faith in biofuels if corn ethanol is all you know.”
Corn requires vast amounts of fossil fuels in the form of nitrogen fertilizer to grow. Processing corn into ethanol exacts an even greater environmental toll, both in terms of the fossil fuels required for its conversion and of the carbon dioxide — a principal global warming culprit — emitted in the course of this conversion.
Unlike corn ethanol production, in which only the kernels are extracted to make ethanol, every bit of biomass can be used in energy output. Equally appealing is its smaller carbon footprint. Compared with corn-derived ethanol, growing biomass requires far fewer inputs from fossil-fuel-derived products, such as nitrogen fertilizer. The conversion of biomass into ethanol or other synthetic fuels results in considerably fewer carbon dioxide emissions.
Why is Alabama so well suited to biomass production?
Alabama abounds in many types of biomass sources, particularly forestry biomass and agricultural by-products. Because of its warm climate, our state also is especially well suited for growing switchgrass, considered an especially promising biomass source. Indeed, because of Alabama’s vast biomass potential, it, along with other southern states, often is described as the Middle East of biomass energy.
NRMDI’s long-term vision is of a state bristling in biomass crops and equipped with the cost-effective technologies and infrastructure to profit from them to the fullest degree possible.
How much of our energy needs can we supply with biomass?
The United States consumes an immense amount of energy — nearly 25 percent of the energy consumed throughout the world. While we will never be energy independent, we can offset a significant amount of our fossil fuel energy consumption by using biomass.
The United States has enough residual agricultural and forest biomass resources to replace 30 percent of petroleum consumption. Alabama alone has 22 million acres of forestland and 6 million acres of grassland and cropland. Within these 22 million acres of forestland, there are more than 900 million tons of woody biomass, equivalent to 2.5 billion barrels of oil. Our current forest harvesting activities leave more than 4 million tons of woody biomass on the ground, which is enough to make 240 million gallons of ethanol (or about 10 percent of the gasoline we use each year in Alabama).
Agricultural experts estimate that Alabama farmers could produce at least 4 million tons of switchgrass each year, which can be used for producing liquid fuels or electrical power. Another abundant agricultural residue in Alabama is poultry litter. Our productive poultry industry generates nearly 2 million tons of poultry litter each year. This much poultry litter could supply 20 percent of our residential energy use.
What are the challenges associated with producing biomass for energy?
Our agricultural and forest products industries already are efficient and productive. In fact, Alabama’s forest products industry could be described as the world’s largest handler of biomass today. However, many of the production systems currently being used are not designed to produce the lowest cost biomass material best suited to energy production. We must change how we produce, harvest, transport, store and process biomass so that liquid fuels and electric power can be produced at the lowest cost. Biomass tends to be lightweight, which makes transportation expensive.
Through NRMDI, Auburn faculty are working hard to develop new plant varieties as well as new systems for harvesting and handling these biomass sources to secure the lowest possible costs for these materials. Some examples of this research on display at Alabama Energy Day include smaller-scale forest harvesting machines specifically designed to harvest small diameter trees currently not used by the forest product industry. Other machines demonstrate how agricultural biomass can be packaged and transported more efficiently.
How do we convert biomass into energy products?
Scientists and engineers use two ways to convert biomass into energy — biochemical methods and thermochemical methods.
With biochemical methods — also known as the sugar platform — enzymes are used to break down cellulosic materials into sugars, which are then fermented to make ethanol and other alcohols.
Thermochemical methods typically use gasification in which heat, oxygen or steam are used to break down biomass into synthetic gas. Synthesis gas, which is made up of hydrogen, carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide, can be converted into liquid fuels, such as gasoline or diesel fuel, or it can be used to power internal combustion engines or turbines that generate electricity.
Why does NRMDI view gasification as such a promising method for helping Alabama capitalize on its biomass potential?
Other countries, most notably South Africa, have had marked success gasifying coal and then converting this synthesized gas into fuels. The NRMDI, through its Center for Bioenergy and Bioproducts, ultimately wants to demonstrate how this can be done with clean-burning, renewable fuel sources, particularly biomass. Indeed, AU already has developed a thermochemical approach for gasifying biomass into a form suitable for conversion into biofuels, such as synthetic diesel fuel, gasoline and aviation fuel. The next challenge will involve fine-tuning this process into a cost-effective method — one that ultimately could rival and ultimately replace the approach currently used with corn.
What are some of the ways that NRMDI and the Center for Bioenergy and Bioproducts are putting this renewable energy vision into effect?
Most recently, the NRMDI, in partnership with Alabama Power, equipped a mobile gasification power unit to be used in demonstration tours throughout the state.
This self-contained unit, designed and built by Community Power Corporation of Littleton, Colo., to Auburn University specifications, will be used to demonstrate how electrical power and heat can be generated from carbon-neutral biomass — the sort of material that is widely available throughout the state.
Source: Dr. Steven Taylor, professor and chairman of the AU Department of Biosystems Engineering and director of the NRMDI's Center for Bioenergy and Bioproducts.
Posted by Jim Langcuster at January 22, 2008 02:32 PM