MADISON, Wis.- As part of the Biden administration’s plan to cut the transportation sector’s carbon footprint by 2025, researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison believe to cut carbon from car, plane, and ship fuel, we should look into the soil at energy crops.
“You can think of the Midwest as the Middle East of agricultural residues,” said Tim Donohue, because his team at UW’s Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center dreams of black gold from a more straw-colored source.
“Wood, woody biomass,” said Donohue, the director of the GLBRC. “Poplar which is a breedable, rapid turnover crop, we’re also working on something called energy sorghum.”
The transportation sector accounts for one-third of all domestic greenhouse gas emissions, getting 95% of its energy from fossil fuels.
That’s why the Biden administration set out the blueprint to decarbonize the sector by 2050, which means “to produce materials that we depend on without using as much fossil fuels or without increasing the greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere,” Donohue said.
And according to Donohue, it won’t just cultivate the environment but grow your wallet.
“We can model that success by industry would allow them to reduce the price of a gallon of fuel by 25%,” he said.
For the past 15 years, his team has been processing plants like switchgrass. “That we can make juices from it — so if you think about making wine people step on grapes and you get grape juice, that’s not what’s going to happen here, it’s a lot more chemically complicated.”
That juice is then treated in a reactor. The finished product is isobutanol.
It’s not just fuel researchers are hoping to get from it. Aromatics can also be used for a variety of other chemicals that are typically extracted from oil. Just like petrochemicals, isobutanol has to produce other chemicals than fuel.
“We are converting the aromatics from this plant into aromatics the chemical industry would use to make biodegradable plastics, nylon, and other polymers that it currently gets from fossil fuels,” Donohue said.
He said by blending his fuel with existing fossil fuels, it can be used for automotive, aviation, and naval fuel without having to design new engines.
Most of these crops thrive in the Midwest climate, hence his thought of it becoming “the Middle East of agricultural residues.”
“These crops are not going to be shipped from Wisconsin to somewhere else in the world to be made into fuels and chemicals because the shipping costs will kill you,” he said. “It’s going to be local communities and local businesses in the state of Wisconsin that will benefit from this.”
“So, this is really a prime example of what I like to say is energizing the Wisconsin idea,” Donohue said.
Donohue sees this fuel on the market in 10 to 15 years.
“That takes investment by industry, that takes a sign that consumers are going to want to use these compounds and consumers are going to want to use them if they’re cost-effective,” he said.
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