by Aliyah Kovner (Berkeley Lab) Joint BioEnergy Institute researchers demonstrate that jet fuels made from plants could be cost competitive with conventional fossil fuels — … However, a new analysis by scientists at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) shows that sustainable plant-based bio-jet fuels could provide a competitive alternative to conventional petroleum fuels if current development and scale-up initiatives continue to push ahead successfully.
“Techno-economic analysis and life-cycle greenhouse gas mitigation cost of five routes to bio-jet fuel blendstocks,” published recently in the journal Energy & Environmental Science, provides promising evidence that optimizing the biofuel production pipeline – taking carbohydrate-rich plant material and using genetically modified bacteria to digest the isolated sugars into energy-dense molecules that are then chemically converted into a fuel product – is well worth the effort.
…
“The team at JBEI has been working on biological routes to advanced bio-jet fuel blends that are not only derived from plant-based sugars but also have attractive properties that could actually provide an advantage over conventional jet fuels.” (lead author Corinne Scown, a researcher in Berkeley Lab’s Energy Technologies Area as well as DOE’s Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI))
…
Due to the biomass deconstruction and fuel synthesis technologies developed at JBEI, the theoretical cost of bio-jet fuel has declined steadily in recent years and is currently as low as $16 per gallon, as compared to $300,000 per gallon when JBEI was established, according to co-author and JBEI postdoctoral fellow Nawa Baral. The cost of standard jet fuel is about $2.50 per gallon.
To explore how bio-jet fuel could bridge the remaining price gap, the research team used complex computer simulations that modeled the necessary technology and subsequent costs of complete, scaled-up production pathways at different efficiency levels and with a range of biomass and chemical inputs. The authors simulated a total of five different production pathways to four distinct fuel molecules.
The results showed that all five pathways could indeed create fuel products at the target price of $2.50 per gallon if manufacturers are able to convert the leftover lignin into a valuable chemical – something JBEI researchers are currently working toward – that could be sold to offset the cost of biofuels. The net price of a gallon of biofuel could be lowered further if airlines were offered even a modest financial credit for emissions reduction.
Following some industry research, the team also found that airlines may be willing to pay a premium of as much as fifty cents per gallon because all four biofuels deliver more energy per unit volume, meaning a plane could fly farther on a tank of the same size.
…
“It’s clear that, to get these fuels to commercial viability, we need all hands on deck,” Scown noted. “But this analysis highlights the importance of multi-institutional, integrative research centers like JBEI because no group working on one phase of the process alone can make it happen.” READ MORE
Berkeley Lab researchers demonstrate bio-jet fuel competitiveness (Biofuels International)