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                                                                                              Biomass Myth

There is an intentionally cultivated myth that biomass carbon is "green" and therefore may be used to produce low cost biofuels with no harm to the environment:

• Carbon balance is "zero" since biomass has already consumed certain amount of CO₂ for growth and released respective amount of oxygen.

• The Sun light provided all the energy for the process and there is no soil depletion in nutrients and minerals if the biomass is removed from the fields for some processing to "biofuels". 

• Watering does not consume much water.

• There is no manpower involved and there is no fuel burned to grow the biomass, etc.

If that was so, the farmers would not need to work hard to get the crops growing with a massive support of the governments and banks, and then probably everyone would become a farmer.  Is that the case?  Apparently, no.

• Unless biomass grows naturally, its growth requires use of land, fuel, fertilizers, water and manpower.  Therefore, the CO₂ balance is not "zero" already.

• A growth season lasts some portion of the year for most crops in most parts of this planet. In some areas crops may be harvested twice a year  - but this space is limited by some tropical areas.  Biomass growth does not keep up with the 24/7/365 manufacturing demand of raw material in the amounts suitable for commercial applications. For instance a 35 MGPY biofuel plant requires 40 ton of biomass every hour of operation. To prevent biomass shortage  it has to be stored.

• Industrial use of biomass as a carbon source causes dangerous spikes of excess CO₂ not keeping up with oxygen production by the plants served as source of biomass.

Therefore, cost-wise biomass has to be grown and collected, transported, and stored round the year for 24/7/365 plant operations under climate controlled conditions.  Biomass is heavily contaminated with naturally occurring spores of cellulolytic anaerobes. Spores of anaerobes germinate and microorganisms start natural fermentation of the biomass when small topical areas of anaerobiosis and moisture are formed and expanded underneath biomass during storage. Natural biomass "fermentation" by natural cellulolytic contaminants during biomass storage is an exothermic process.  At some point temperature increase causes physical burning of the biomass. 

In addition, properly stored (and thus not self-burned as above) biomass has to be processed.  The processing includes

• mechanical pre-treatment to form particles of  1 - 10 mm,

• sterilization of this mix of solid particles (very energy consuming compared to sterilization of liquids and thus is very expensive),

• enzymatic pre-treatment (adds about $0.3 - 0.6  per gallon of conventional bio ethanol or twice of that for conventional bio butanol), and then

• fermentation with 34% loss as CO₂in the vent.

The 34% loss as CO₂ going to vent means the CO₂ disposal cost.  Traditional ways of CO₂ disposal include:

• pumping of compressed to supercritical state CO₂ from the ethanol or butanol plant to the mature oil wells via expensive pipelines (there is also a need to have an oil field next to the biomass-to-ethanol plant) or

• disposal as a chemical for use in the chemical or food industry applications.

Therefore, biomass is a very expensive source of raw material carbon for making biofuels.  Many experts name the cost of biomass carbon  as high as $6 per MBTU of the resulting biofuel.

                            Case study: Butanol from Sugars, or Butanol from Biomass-Derived Sugars

           Drawbacks - Greenhouse Effect, Low Carbon Recovery Rate, High Manufacturing Costs,  No Validated Economics

All technologies are Glycolysis-based (34% of raw material carbon forms CO₂)

Butanol from sugars: sugars are expensive as raw material, and carbon recovery as butanol is only 25 - 43% - raw material cost + CO₂ disposal cost

Butanol from biomass-derived sugars.  Average biomass cost, according to some experts,  based on its BTU value is as expensive as ~ $6.00 per 1 MM BTU.  Biomass is collected only once or twice a year, and has to be stored under climate controlled conditions - raw material cost + collection, storage costs + pretreatment cost (enzymes cost comprises about $ 0.60 - $1.2 per gallon of butanol produced) + CO₂ disposal cost

It is important that accumulation in bioreactor of non-fermentable part of biomass (~20%), lignin, prevents from continuous fermentation in commercial bioreactors

No inexpensive source of heat and electric energy for the process

Numerous exothermic reactions in solventogenic clostridia

Internally produced heat prevents from scaling-up - as there is an increasing need for internal cooling of bioreactors - cost of cooling

Threat of phage attacks

Butanol fermentations suffer from phages entering bioreactors from outside with water and nutrients being in contact with thriving microbial communities (waste waters, etc.) - shut down costs

Mixture of final liquid products increases cost of butanol separation

Complex gene regulation of genes of butanol pathway in solventogenic clostridia

Only limited part of the cell development cycle in solventogenic clostridia is suited for butanol production -

continuous fermentation is problematic.

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Last modified: 07/07/10