Jack Saddler, a professor in University of British Columbia’s Faculty of Forestry, has presented his work on biofuels at the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s (AAAS) 2012 annual meeting.
According to him, biofuels will develop as an environmentally and economically sustainable solution as the demand for energy continues to rise globally. He also added that the usage of fossil fuels will become less and the dependency on fuels made from the chemicals and sugars in plants will become higher.
Biofuel Road Map from the International Energy Agency forecasts that biofuels will become highly essential during the 2020s. Saddler has been studying the process of converting biomass into ethanol for over 30 years.
The 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act in the United States signifies that 31 billion gallons of ethanol need to be blended with gasoline by 2022. The federal government in Canada directs that 5% of renewable fuel content should be added in gasoline. Hence, to meet the government’s directive, biofuels are mixed with gasoline.
Currently, the biofuels industry are not viable both in economical and commercial manner. This is because of the cost and time required to break down plant materials. Biomass like agricultural residues and trees take many years to break down and decay. Saddler and his team are working to discover new ways to break down plant materials within few minutes or hours.
At present, biofuels are produced in two ways: by utilizing enzymes to break down starch in wheat and corn to produce sugars and by allowing the sugar derived from food crops to undergo fermentation process. The main objective of the UBC research is to produce biomass derived sugars that are cheaper than those made from food crops.
Source: http://www.aaas.ubc.ca/