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August 10, 2007
"It's too expensive!" That's been the cry of critics when it comes to ethanol made from biomass, often called cellulosic ethanol. Almost all of today's ethanol, which currently appears in gasoline in blends of 10 percent or less, is made from corn grain, using a standard fermentation process. Cellulosic ethanol is made from the remainder of the corn plant or other cellulose sources such as switchgrass. Now an economic study published this week in the new journal, Biofuels, Bioproducts, & Biorefining by researchers from Iowa State University concludes that the production costs of cellulosic ethanol are now similar to those of grain ethanol.
Making the switch to cellulosic ethanol could reduce competition with grain for food and would also allow production of ethanol from cornstalks or other biomass sources, which otherwise might go to waste.
Mark Wright and Robert Brown set out to compare the capital and operating costs of generating fuel from starch and cellulose-containing materials. They found that with corn prices now topping $3 per bushel, the cost of conventional grain ethanol production has risen to $1.74 per gallon, while advances in biomass processing technologies have reduced the cost of cellulosic ethanol to $1.80 per gallon.
However, a real difference remains in capital expenditures. Conventional ethanol plants already exist, but in order to churn out enough ethanol to meet our fuel requirements, new, more capital-intensive cellulosic biorefineries need to be built.
"Although the costs of production are comparable for grain ethanol and cellulosic biofuels, the much higher capital costs of the cellulosic plants will be an impediment to their commercialization," says Wright.
"That's why it is imperative that we see continued strong federal investment in both R&D and commercialization of cellulosic biofuels," says Brent Erickson, executive vice president of BIO's Industrial and Environmental Biotechnology section. "Cellulosic ethanol has the potential to dramatically reduce our dependence on foreign petroleum, but only if it can compete with petroleum on price. Thanks to industrial biotechnology, cellulosic ethanol is becoming a commercial reality. With continued research on industrial enzymes, and lessons learned from the construction of the first cellulosic biorefineries, there's no telling how far we can go."
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