Joule Unlimited Aims for 25,000 gal/acre Ethanol, 15,000 gal/acre Diesel

Bioengineering startup Joule Unlimited Technologies, utilises highly engineered photosynthetic micro-organisms to produce fuels and high value chemicals from CO2 and sunlight. Joule intends to eventually produce its fuels and chemicals without the need for biomass or biomass sugars for feedstock.

Joule Unlimited Technologies, a bioengineering startup leveraging highly engineered photosynthetic organisms to catalyze the conversion of sunlight and CO2 to fuels and chemicals, has been awarded its first two US patents covering its fundamental method for producing ethanol at volumes and efficiencies surpassing biomass-dependent processes.

...These two latest patents relate to methods for increasing the ethanol production capability of a photosynthetic microorganism. Joule’s platform microorganism is engineered to produce and secrete ethanol in a continuous process, converting more than 90% of the CO2 it consumes directly to end product, with no reliance on biomass feedstocks....

...Joule claims that these innovations, together with its advances in bioprocessing and solar capture and conversion, will help it achieve an ultimate target of 25,000 gallons per acre annually—a rate that is 10X greater than that of cellulosic ethanol and 100X greater than corn ethanol—while requiring no depletion of food crops, agricultural land or fresh water. Joule is now producing ethanol at pilot scale, and has achieved nearly 50% of its ultimate productivity target in the lab, it says.

In addition, by eliminating the need for biomass, Joule avoids the burden of fluctuating feedstock cost and supply, as well as the energy-intensive, multi-step conversion of biomass to product. At full-scale commercial production Joule expects to produce ethanol for as little as $0.60/gallon.

In an open access paper published earlier this year in the journal Photosynthesis Research, a Joule team concluded that its direct, single-step, continuous process for the production of solar hydrocarbon fuels could produce the areal equivalent of up to 15,000 gallons of diesel per acre annually. _GCC

As Al Fin industrial engineers have pointed out previously, it is easy to get high yields per "acre" if one builds photobioreactors vertically, essentially multiplying growing area while maintaining the same building footprint area. Joule has a lot of work to do if it is to achieve its production targets without utilising such tricks.

Joule Unlimited Calculates Cost as Low as $20 a Barrel Diesel

GCC
Joule Unlimited has signed a lease agreement for a site in New Mexico, for production of its Helioculture microbial fuel. As reported here earlier, Joule reckons it can achieve photosynthetic yields sufficient to produce renewable diesel at costs as low as $20 a barrel, when taking subsidies into account. (abstract and link to full text PDF supporting Joule's yield calculations, via GCC)

Joule’s process, called Helioculture, combines an engineered cyanobacterial organism supplemented with a product pathway and secretion system to produce and secrete a fungible alkane diesel product continuously in a SolarConverter designed to efficiently and economically collect and convert photonic energy. The process is closed and uses industrial waste CO2 at concentrations 50–100 times higher than atmospheric.

The diesel process yields long-chain alkanes, the majority component of diesel fuel, as opposed to a low-percentage blendstock like biodiesel. As a result it can immediately drop in to the existing diesel infrastructure with no need for refining or chemical processing.

Joule’s production facilities will employ the next generation of the company’s novel SolarConverter system, which manages the direct, continuous process from photon capture to product synthesis and separation with efficiencies that are up to 50X greater than those of biomass-dependent processes. At full-scale production, Joule expects to deliver diesel and ethanol for as little as $20/bble and $0.60/gallon respectively, including current subsidies. _GCC

It is possible that the theory supports Joule's assertions, but theoretical yields can be different from actual yields. While microbial fuels are likely to provide fuels and high value chemicals for the intermediate to distant futures, in the more near term, biomass approaches using thermochemical and clever fermentation and catalytic processes are likely to capture the field -- in terms of renewable fuels.

Biomass-derived sugars will be far cheaper than sugars from cane or corn (maize). Thermochemical approaches (gasification, pyrolysis, etc) are relatively quick and easy, and when combined with F-T and other advanced catalytic syntheses, can produce significan volumes of high grade fuels and chemicals -- as long as sufficient supplies of biomass are assured.

Joule is one of many microbial (including micro-algae) fuels startups combining world-class research talent with substantial financial backing. But it will take years to learn to get around what are currently seen as iron-clad limitations in yield from photosynthetic approaches. Eventually, they will succeed, and the world will change as a result.

Biofuels Production of Over US$ 11 Trillion by 2050: IEA

In Washington, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said that it expects biofuels to generate $11-$13 trillion in production between 2010 and 2050, and the global share of biofuel in total transport fuel to grow from 2% today to 27% in 2050. _BiofuelsDigest

PDF IEA Report PDF

UC Berkeley is "all in" on the project. Not only is UCB an integral part of the Joint BioEnergy Institute, the school has also just launched the Synthetic Biology Institute for new research & development in biological engineering, and scale the advances up to industrial levels.

In the meantime, dozens of well-financed biotech companies, such as Joule Unlimited, are rushing ahead to develop custom microbes specifically tailored to produce specific fuels and high value chemical products. Joule is based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on the opposite side of the US from UC Berkeley, in the middle of a competing high technology startup zone. Similar zones are located near Stanford U., around Austin, Texas, near La Jolla, California, and around dozens of other high tech startup zones across North America.

Clearly, if biofuels are to provide roughly 1/3 of global transportation fuels by the year 2050, a tremendous amount of feedstock will be required. Cellulosic biomass (both marine and terrestrial) will be one type of feedstock, as will waste streams of various types. All types of waste plastics, waste rubbers, waste papers and cardboards, waste foam packing etc etc will be routinely grabbed up by this growing industry, as valuable feedstock. Anything considered "garbage" or "waste" today is likely to be seen as a feedstock to be turned into high value product, by the time period of 2025 to 2050.

This will be simple economics, not an effort to "save Gaia."

Virginia Tech has recently licensed an open software tool tailored for synthetic biology safety. It is meant to monitor chemical reagent and biological agent acquisitions, to minimise the dangers of misuse of synthetic biology technologies, eg for terrorism.

Joule Tries to Push the Photosynthetic Limit on Microbial Fuels

JouleThe graph above illustrates some of the limiting factors for production of biofuels and biomass using photosynthesis. The paper linked here provides more in-depth thinking on this topic. To achieve higher yields, it is necessary to feed much higher levels of CO2 to the bioreactors than is available in the atmosphere. Modifying the microbes to channel most of their effort toward biofuels production is required. And photon input must be maximised to provide high input energies.

Several emerging technologies are aiming to.....provide viable alternatives to fossil fuels. Direct conversion of solar energy into fungible liquid fuel is a particularly attractive option, though conversion of that energy on an industrial scale depends on the efficiency of its capture and conversion. Large-scale programs have been undertaken in the recent past that used solar energy to grow innately oil-producing algae for biomass processing to biodiesel fuel. These efforts were ultimately deemed to be uneconomical because the costs of culturing, harvesting, and processing of algal biomass were not balanced by the process efficiencies for solar photon capture and conversion. This analysis addresses solar capture and conversion efficiencies and introduces a unique systems approach, enabled by advances in strain engineering, photobioreactor design, and a process that contradicts prejudicial opinions about the viability of industrial photosynthesis. We calculate efficiencies for this direct, continuous solar process based on common boundary conditions, empirical measurements and validated assumptions wherein genetically engineered cyanobacteria convert industrially sourced, high-concentration CO2 into secreted, fungible hydrocarbon products in a continuous process. These innovations are projected to operate at areal productivities far exceeding those based on accumulation and refining of plant or algal biomass or on prior assumptions of photosynthetic productivity. This concept, currently enabled for production of ethanol and alkane diesel fuel molecules, and operating at pilot scale, establishes a new paradigm for high productivity manufacturing of nonfossil-derived fuels and chemicals. _Robertson, Jacobson et al

ImageSource SpringerlinkJoule claims the ability to produce up to 15,000 gallons of advanced biofuel per acre, using its modified cyanobacteria in "Helioculture" bioreactors. The research paper describing the researchers' thinking, published in Photosynthesis Research.
The approach described in the paper linked above and below allows for a more comprehensive look at the requirements for a high-yield system of production of biofuels using photosynthetic organisms.

Not all photons that enter a reactor are available for conversion. For instance, it may be too costly to maintain the reactor in a condition in which it can convert every photon, such as early in the morning and late in the day when solar radiation is very diffuse. Likewise, depending on how the reactor temperature is maintained, the organisms may not be at optimal production temperature early in the morning. In addition, at very high intensity levels, the organisms may not be able to convert all of the photons. Based on models that integrate solar and meteorological data with a thermal and production model, we estimate that about 15% of the incoming photons will not be available for conversion for the direct case. We assign a comparable loss to the algal open pond.
................................................................................

The main fractional loss in photosynthetic conversion results from energy-driven metabolism. Because the photosynthetic process is ultimately exothermic, the available energy contained in the product formed by metabolism is a fraction of that contained in the incoming photons. The remaining energy is dissipated as heat into the culture. For the production of alkane, we calculated that ~12 photons are required to reduce each molecule of CO2. Assuming an average PAR photon energy of 226 kJ/mol and a heating value of 47.2 MJ/kg for alkane, the photosynthetic conversion efficiency is about 25% (equivalent to a loss of 74.8%). For the simpler triglyceride, we assume only eight photons are required to reduce each molecule of CO2, but that the product consists of half triglyceride (heating value ≈37 kJ/kg) and half simple biomass (heating value ≈15.6 kJ/kg), resulting in a photosynthetic conversion efficiency of about 29.8%. This value for algal open ponds is considered to be very conservative, with the actual value likely a few percent lower. Finally, for the theoretical maximum, we use the value computed in Zhu et al. (2008) for a maximum photosynthetic efficiency of 29.1% (obtained by combining the loss for photochemical inefficiency and carbohydrate synthesis). _Source

Brian Wang also looks at this paper.

There is no easy way to produce high yield advanced biofuels -- else it would have been accomplished decades ago. The density of sunlight and available CO2 -- as well as selfish microbes who only think about themselves -- present significant obstacles. And yet the prize for success is so great, that billions of US$ are being funneled into the attempt, and dozens of top notch research teams are devoting their time toward the goal.

Forget about peak oil. If you want to see peak energy for Earth, look at the sun and the planetary core, and at the nuclear energy of the atom. Better yet, expand your horizon to take in the enetire solar system. If you're smart, you are only at the beginning.

Joule Unlimited Scores Loads of Free Publicity!

A synthetic biofuels company from Massachusetts called "Joule Unlimited" has managed to score tons of free publicity in newspapers, blogs, and news services -- without doing much at all! This is public relations at its finest, and the PR people at Joule have to be congratulated.

Joule is involved in the synthetic genomics of cyanobacteria -- having obtained patents to engineer the production of hydrocarbon fuels from bacteria using CO2 and sunlight. But in the news business, most journalists are always asking a potential news focus: "What have you done for me lately?" And in the case of Joule, the answer is "Not much at all."

It all started when the Globe & Mail had a story on Joule a few days ago which erroneously claimed that Joule's miracle bacterium was E. Coli -- after several people notified the paper of their error, they finally corrected it. But not before scores of blogs and other news sources repeated the G&M mistake verbatim. But the Globe & Mail story was about something that happened -- a patent approval -- in September 2010. So why did it take off in January 2011?

A respectable fusion energy forum -- Talk Polywell -- picked the story up, and it then spread. Respected blogger and engineer M. Simon picked up the story from Talk Polywell. Then Instapundit's Glenn Reynolds picked up the story from M. Simon. And from there the story spreads across the blogosphere...

But what has Joule Unlimited actually done lately to merit this new publicity?

Well, they elected John Podesta to their board of directors.

They somehow got dufus Senator John Kerry to call Joule's technology "a game changer."

Then, way back in September 2010 Joule is awarded a patent on its technology

Al Fin analysts can be heard muttering: "Not much progress for all of that free publicity."

Microbial bioenergy is indeed a game changer. But Joule Unlimited is only one of many fine companies with very fine research and development staffs who are working hard to bring large scale microbial fuels to reality. How did Joule's PR department trigger this isolated inflationary bubble of "news?"

Al Fin Energy Institute researchers are not complaining, mind you. Microbial fuels are set to be ready to start scaling up in roughly 10 years. In 20 years, microbial fuels will score at least 10% of the liquid fuels markets in advanced western countries. In 30 years, petroleum companies will be pushed to the wall to keep their costs down low enough to compete.

But premature ejaculations of gee whiz futurism can lead to wide-scale cynicism. In the case of microbial fuels, neither gee-whiz! optimism nor cynical pessimism are warranted. Synthetic genomics is pretty spectacular -- but it takes time to get results. Give it time.

Joule Unlimited patent applications

Proviso: In a fast-changing environment such as industrial synthetic genomics and synthetic fuels, breakthroughs can occur at any time. It is not always in a company's interest to reveal the state of its R&D progress. But all breakthroughs require time to develop into industrial processes, and much more time to scale up to actual commercial and industrial supply systems. As time goes on, we will hear about a lot of breakthroughs. Most of these newsreleases deserve to be taken with a tablespoon of magnesium sulfate and two glasses of water.

Update: Now Brian Wang has picked up the story at NextBigFuture. Brian featured the correct bacterial species in his posting and features some original material from the company's website -- proving once again that Brian's is the best of the technology blogs.

Watching this story getting picked up from site to site provides a dynamic portrait of blogospheric connections. In this case the Globe & Mail writer -- Neil Reynolds, who is one of my favourite mainstream press energy writers -- reported on a company that is no doubt doing some excellent work. But Reynolds was not actually reporting on recent news, he was merely highlighting ongoing work of one particular microbial fuels company. Just one out of many fine companies working on microbial fuels.

15,000 GPAcre Biodiesel? 25,000 GPAcre Ethanol? A Joule of a Claim

Joule Unlimited -- a company that uses genetically engineered cyanobacteria to produce biofuels -- has been granted another patent on its engineered cyanobacteria. At the same time, it is announcing some rather ambitious yield targets for two different biofuels from its newly patented organism.

Joule says its microbes can produce the equivalent of 25,000 gallons of ethanol per acre per year and 15,000 gallons of diesel per acre per year. Pilot production on diesel begins later this year. It says it has already shown it can produce 10,000 gallons of ethanol a year, or 40 percent of its goal, on its pilot lines in Leander, Texas.

Those production figures are far higher than the usual industry claims, which at this point are still largely in the theoretical realm themselves. No one is in mass production with microbe fuels just yet. Most algae companies talk about producing the equivalent of 5,000 to 10,000 gallons of diesel-like hydrocarbons a year. Some researchers have noted that fuel production will be capped by the finite amount of sunlight that falls on a given plot of land.

Then there are the practicalities. Joule grows its organisms with water and companies, including the now defunct Greenfuel Technologies, have found that separating organisms and/or their byproducts from water isn't easy.

Organisms, many critics note, also can't produce fuel as fast and in the same quantities as thermochemical processes. Cambrios Technologies started out as a company that designed bugs to develop green chemicals. The company found it was easier to produce the chemicals the good old fashioned way and spun off its biological division into Siluria.

If Joule can achieve these numbers, it could leap to the front of the biofuel pack. The fact that Joule says it can produce hydrocarbons and an alcohol like ethanol is intriguing too. _GTM

The ability to produce either ethanol or hydrocarbons would make any micro-organism particularly versatile. But to produce either in the quantity yields which Joule is projecting, would make it a champion among microbial species. Should it be disqualified because it has an unfair advantage from genetic modification? Only if you are deeply into Political Peak Oil.

Peak Oil: Meet Joule Unlimited's Genengineered Phototrophic Bio-factories

A variety of microorganisms are known to encode light-activated proton translocation systems. In the present invention, one or more forms of light-activated proton pumps are functionally expressed in E. coli or other host cells to generate a proton gradient that is converted into ATP via an endogenous or exogenous ATPase.

The production and isolation of products from synthetophototrophic organisms can be enhanced by employing specific fermentation techniques. An essential element to maximizing production while reducing costs is increasing the percentage of the carbon source that is converted to such products.... _BD

Joule Unlimited (formerly Joule Biotechnologies) has emerged from hiding to unveil a startling and comprehensive approach to energy-from-sun-CO2-and-brackish water. Joule skips the middle man -- biomass -- and goes directly to production of high value hydrocarbons. Cleverly gene engineered E. Coli cyanobacteria have been given the capability to synthesise fuels and high-value chemicals from sunlight, waste CO2 from industrial plants, and saltwater or brackish water. If things work out as claimed, Joule may move up the timeline for microbial fuels significantly.

... in using a bio-based organism as the base for synthesizing fuels from sunlight, CO2 and water, Joule is very much making a biofuel. But it is a wholly different type of biofuel. For the photosynthetic properties of the organism are not being used to make biomass — and otherwise serve the energy and life needs of the organism — they are being directed to making fuel.

...It’s not new life, but its pretty close. Some plant-enhancing strategies, which knock out or overexpress certain genes to enhance, shut down, or insert some new property into an organism. Joule does all that, too....“Commencing with e.coli, they have used that well-studied bacteria as a base for layering on a series of genetic-based skills - a skill for fixing carbon dioxide, a skill for grabbing water molecules, a skill for fixing photons – and a skill for converting those inputs – in a series of chemical transformations known as a metabolic pathway – into a hydrocarbon which can be used as a fuel. All while using e.coli’s system for preserving its own life and regulating its own systems.

...We also heard the same 100,000 gallons per acre as everyone else, and we understand why people say what they say about 15,000 gallons per acre. But we already at 10,000 gallons per acre and that is 4 times what biomass can achieve using the old approaches. _BiofuelsDigest

So Joule is claiming 10,000 gallons of hydrocarbon per acre to be possible, using its engineered, continuous process E. Coli cyanobacteria bioreactors. Claims are easy to make, of course. Proving their claim at commercial scale will be more difficult.

The general timeline expectation for microbial and algal fuels is for commercial production to begin scaling up to competitive levels around the year 2020. Craig Venter is aiming to cut that 10 year development time in half. Joule Unlimited may have similar expectations. Al Fin is skeptical, and continues to see 2020 as the likeliest intersection point of price points for microbial fuels (in volume) with petroleum fuels.

It is best not to become too invested in any one approach toward bio-energy. There will probably not be any one "magic bullet." If you look at the multi-$trillion petroleum industry, you should begin to realise that there is plenty of market room to go around.

The promise of bio-energy is the promise of fuel (and other forms of energy, feed, chemicals etc) as a predictably priced commodity, produced and available virtually anywhere on the planet. And while the oil dictators of Russia, Iran, Venezuela, etc. may not be able to eat their oil after 2020, they will be able to offer it on the market in competition with a wide variety of other fuels more readily available -- and considered cleaner. We hope the oil dictators can adjust their lifestyles downward accordingly without too much hardship.

Sunlight + CO2 = Hydrocarbon Fuels and Chemicals

Joule Biotechnologies announced its process for microbial fuels production at the Bio Pacific Rim Conference in Honolulu.

unlike algae and other current biomass-derived fuels, the Helioculture process does not produce biomass, requires no agricultural feedstock and minimizes land and water use. It is also direct-to-product, so there is no lengthy extraction and/or refinement process.

The breakthrough was made possible by the discovery of unique genes coding for enzymatic mechanisms that enable the direct synthesis of both alkane and olefin molecules – the chemical composition of diesel. Production was achieved at lab scale, with pilot development slated for early 2011.

Because its organisms are being engineered to directly secrete hydrocarbon molecules, Joule will avoid costly steps such as large-scale biomass collection, energy-intensive degradation, or other downstream refinement. In addition, Joule’s process requires just marginal, non-arable land, no crops and no fresh water. __BiofuelsDigest

This is just an announcement of a lab finding, but it is an indication of the direction that the biofuels industry is eventually trending.

For those slow thinkers who are still worried that biomass production will not be able to keep up with the looming demand for biofuels, Ceres tells them to think again:

Energy crop company Ceres, Inc. plans to expand an advanced trait development project to increase biomass yields of several energy grasses by as much as 40% in coming years, while simultaneously decreasing the use of inputs such as nitrogen fertilizers. The project will be funded in part by a $5 million ARPA-E grant from the US Department of Energy (DOE). (Earlier post.)

Projections indicate that the Ceres traits alone could displace 1.3 billion barrels of oil and 58 million tons of coal over a ten-year period. Depending on cropping practices, 1.2 million tons of nitrogen fertilizer could be eliminated (about the amount of nitrogen needed for 24 million acres of cotton), among other benefits. _GCC

Most critics of biofuels in academia, media, government, and think tanks, are mere bureaucratic mentalities. They lack the imagination and resourcefulness that people in growing and innovative industries require as a basic prerequisite. It is no wonder that these bureaucrats are always several years behind what is happening.