NREL Research on Converting Biomass to Liquid Fuels (Text Version)
[Video opens with shots of a gas station, pumps and someone fueling their car.]
Announcer: HIGH PRICES AT THE PUMP...
[Traffic goes by on a freeway.]
Announcer: DEPENDENCE ON FOREIGN OIL...
Jim McMillan, Senior Biochemical Engineer: "Our gasoline consumption is about 140 billion gallons per year."
Announcer: AIR POLLUTION...
THEY COULD ONE-DAY BE PROBLEMS OF THE PAST THANKS TO WORK GOING ON NOW AT THE NATIONAL RENEWABLE ENERGY LABORATORY IN GOLDEN, COLORADO.
[NREL campus which fades to interview of Jim McMillan and Andy Aden ]
Andy Aden, NREL Engineer: "It's never been done before. We're trying to do something that's first of a kind and really benefit society as well. That's absolutely exciting."
McMillan: "We are looking at domestically-produced, renewable feedstocks that we can convert to liquid fuels."
[Corn fields]
Announcer: FARMERS ARE HARVESTING FIELDS OF CORN NOT ONLY FOR FOOD... BUT FOR FUEL.
MOST OF THE ALTERNATIVE FUEL IN THE U.S. TODAY IS CORN GRAIN ETHANOL.
McMillan: "It represents about three- to four-percent of our gasoline supply."
Announcer: NOT ENOUGH.
NREL ENGINEERS SAY CELLULOSIC ETHANOL COULD POTENTIALLY ELIMINATE THE NEED FOR IMPORTED OIL WITHOUT EATING UP OUR CORN SUPPLY.
Aden: "You don't get into the feed versus fuel issues."
Announcer: CELLULOSIC ETHANOL.
IT'S PLANT MATTER...
McMillan: "You have inner parts of the stalk..."
Announcer: LIKE THE LEFTOVERS FROM THE CORN HARVEST...
McMillan: "pieces of cob, pieces of the leaf."
Announcer: CONVERTED TO LIQUID FUEL AT N-REL.
Aden: "My name is Andy Aden. I'm an engineer here at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, and the building we're in right now is called the AFUF, the Alternative Fuels User Facility."
Announcer: ANDY ADEN IS PART OF THIS PIONEER PROJECT TO MAKE FUEL FROM ORGANIC PLANT MATTER KNOWN AS BIOMASS.
McMillan: "These are biomass samples we're about to do a dry-weight on."
Announcer: BIOMASS IS MADE OF THREE COMPONENTS... CELLULOSE.
Aden: "This is what was mentioned in the President's State of the Union Address as cellulosic biomass."
Announcer: LONG CHAINS OF SUGARS KNOWN AS HEMICELLULOSE AND LIGNIN.
Aden: "It's kind of the glue that holds the plant together."
Announcer: THE CORN KERNALS USED FOR GRAIN ETHANOL ARE COMPOSED OF STARCH... EASY AND INEXPENSIVE TO CONVERT, BUT LIMITED IN SUPPLY. BIOMASS IS ABUNDANT, BUT THE CELLULOSE AND HEMICELLOSE ARE STRUCTURAL CARBOHYDRATES.
McMillan: "They're meant to not be broken down easily and as a consequence, it takes more chemicals, more temperature, higher temperatures, more energy essentially to break down the materials."
Aden: "So, here we are in the pilot plant. This is where all the magic happens, so to speak."
Announcer: THIS IS WHERE IT ALL GOES DOWN... N-REL's BIOPROCESSING PILOT PLANT.
Aden: "This facility is built to handle one dry ton of biomass per day."
Announcer: ENOUGH TO CHURN OUT AS MUCH AS 75 GALLONS OF CELLULOSIC ETHANOL. COMMERCIAL-SCALE PLANTS — WHEN THEY'RE BUILT — WILL, OF COURSE, BE MUCH BIGGER AND WILL PRODUCE HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF GALLONS A DAY. THE BIOMASS IS BROUGHT IN, CLEANED UP...
McMillan: "We usually slurry that material, essentially wash it."
Announcer: AND MILLED DOWN.
Aden: "So, this is one of our vats of milled corn stover."
Announcer: IT'S THEN MOVED UPSTAIRS AND SCANNED WITH CUTTING-EDGE TECHNOLOGY...
NATS — SCANNER 46:45
Announcer: THAT ORIGINATED IN N-REL'S COMPOSITIONAL ANALYSIS LAB.
McMillan: "It's really a chemical fingerprint of the material."
Aden: "So that in a matter of minutes, we can tell how much feedstock is coming in. We can tell what the composition is in terms of sugars, glucose, xylose... those types of things."
Announcer: NEXT, IT'S PRETREATMENT.
Aden: "This is the part of the process where we start to break the biomass into its individual constituents, start to put some of the sugars into solution."
Announcer: THE BIOMASS IS MINGLED WITH DILUTED ACID UNDER HIGH PRESSURE AND HEAT.
Aden: "If I were to take this off and take a whiff of it, it would smell sweet, kind of like raisins or molasses, something along those lines."
Announcer: ENZYMES...
Aden: "Which are just natural proteins."
Announcer: ARE INTRODUCED TO RELEASE SUGARS FROM THE CELLULOSE. MORE EFFECTIVE ENZYMES ARE BEING ENGINEERED TO MAKE THE CONVERSION MORE EFFICIENT AND LESS EXPENSIVE.
Aden: "Five years ago, the cellulose enzymes were the largest cost component of this whole process. Within the past five years, industry... in particular, two enzyme companies Genecorp and Novazyme have really helped to reduce the cost of those cellulose enzymes by over a factor of 20."
Announcer: FINALLY, THE SUGARS ARE FERMENTED INTO FUEL.
Aden: "Really, this is a glorified brewery."
McMillan: "The goal is to reduce the production time down to three days and to reduce the cost from the current 2.25 a gallon estimate to $1.07 a gallon or less by 2012."
Announcer: CELLULOSIC ETHANOL...
Aden: "Smells a lot like hooch."
Announcer: BORN OF BIOMASS...
McMillan: "Switchgrass... you heard that mentioned in the President's State of the Union Address."
Aden: "and then, all the way over to a hard-wood poplar feedstock like this."
McMillan: "After they extract the juice from the sugar cane, they're left with so-called bagasse."
Announcer: AND BREWED INTO THE BLUEPRINT FOR CLEAN, HOME-GROWN RENEWABLE FUELS.
McMillan: "This could be a win for the planet because it's a carbon-neutral technology, a win for rural economies because you're creating a new agricultural resource base."
Announcer: THE PROMISE FOR A BRIGHTER TOMORROW... IT'S DRIVING N-REL's BIOMASS RESEARCH TODAY.
McMillan: "I'm living my dream."
