Converting Switchgrass to Biofuel

Introduction:

People need energy, it’s a fact. We need it for our cars, for our televisions and for our iPods. We need it all the time, every day. The simple fact is though, we are running out. Carbon based fuels are being used at an alarming rate every day. And every day our demand increases as our society becomes more and more reliant on technology.

There is only so much oil in the world though and when that is gone we need to look for alternative sources of energy. Sources like ethanol produced from Switchgrass.

In 2004 an article was published on the creation of ethanol from gases made from switchgrass. The article was titled, “Fermentation of Biomass-Generated Producer Gas to Ethanol.”

This article held produced several interesting results. First it demonstrated that producer gas could be generated from biomass (Switchgrass) and that the producer gas could be fermented to produce ethanol. Second the cells stopped growing but did not die. During this period of non-growth ethanol was produced. Third H2 utilization ceased and fourth “cells began growing again if ‘clean’ bottled gases were introduced following exposure to the producer gas” (Datar, Shenkman, Cateni, Huhnke and Lewis 2004, p. 1.)

Switchgrass

– Panicum virgatum

Why switchgrass? Thats the question of the hour. And to tell there truth there are a lot of reasons. Firstly and foremost is the fact that there are millions of dollars in government funding available. Secondly switchgrass is grown across the entire center of the united states in a variety of environments.

Switchgrass is hardy and adaptable, it grows large and fast, sometime reaching slightly over ten feet in height. As a bonus switchgrass also processes water very efficie...

... middle of paper ...

...ide, 4.4% Hydrogen Gas, and 4.2% Methane gas. The actual gasified switch grass however, did not have this composition and had some unknown molecule or molecules that was damaging to the cells.

This unknown molecule or molecules could be oxygen, nitric oxide, or ammonia, all of which are known to negatively affect cells. This article was published in 2004 and, the follow up experiment that addresses these impurities was conducted by the same people in 2005. In this experiment they found that the gas did in fact have many impurities and an extensive gas cleaning procedure needed to be implemented in order to effectively harvest ethanol from the bacteria P7. The molecule that was mostly responsible for disrupting the cell was nitric oxide. All in all it seems entirely viable to use this biological process in order to manufacture ethanol for wide spread use.