The use of biofuels is sometimes controversial and can require heavy investment to scale up production. However, a new development in producing a lucrative byproduct may prove invaluable for the industry.
Biofuels have always been a controversial subject. On the one hand, they offer an alternative to dwindling fossil fuels, promising to lower carbon emissions and increase energy security.
On the other hand, they raise concerns that switching crops from food to fuel will make it harder and costlier to feed a global population of nearly eight billion.
For this reason, the growth of the sector, both in primary terms and when it comes to demand for equipment like tanks and breather valves, may be constrained somewhat, even if there has been a switch of emphasis to generating energy from food waste instead.
How Could Biofuels Increase Carbon Fibre Production?
However, a new development may provide a significant boost to the sector, with a by-product emerging that could prove lucrative for the industry.
A report by Bioengineer.org has highlighted how this may happen, thanks to a long-running research project at Iowa State University in the US.
Over the past 11 years, Professor Xianglan Bai and her team have been working on a project to convert a mixture of paper and biofuel processing by-products into carbon fibre, establishing a new way of making one of the world’s most sought-after materials.
This is a material used in the most aerodynamic and strong structures modern engineering can produce, including aircraft, wind turbines and even Formula One Cars. However, it is mainly produced from fossil fuels.
What Professor Bai and her team have established is that there is another way to do it:
- Paper and pulp manufacturing produce kraft lignin, a polymer that binds cells in trees
- The biofuel industry produces bio-oil when wood chips and other biological material are heated in the biofuel process
- When combined, these two substances can produce carbon fibre
As the report notes, the idea is not new, with researchers in Japan working on the idea of using lignin from paper since the 1960s.
However, until now, such efforts have failed to produce carbon fibre of a comparable strength to that made using petrochemical processes.
What Could Producing Raw Materials For Carbon Fibre Do For The Biofuels Sector?
Professor Bai’s team has solved the problem by introducing mechanical stress into the process of spinning lignin into fibre while undergoing heat treatment. This alters the chemical process and produces a far harder material, meeting industry requirements.
This breakthrough may have significant benefits for the sector, as by-products could prove a source of extra revenue as raw material for carbon fibre production, which in turn could reduce the need for petrochemicals to be used in the process.
As the article put it, this could “meaningfully boost the economics of both paper manufacturing and emerging biofuel production”.
The question of whether this will prove transformative in a world where there is still a concern about the use of cropland to provide feedstocks for biofuel will, of course, remain. This may be partly offset by the same principle of finding ways of recycling waste.
Food waste is the obvious example and this is already taking place in many instances, while slurry may also be used.
A difficulty with these products, of course, is that they will not produce the raw materials for the production of carbon fibre through the process devised by Professor Bai and her team.
However, given the potential for scaling up biofuels, the solution may arise through diversification, ensuring enough biofuel is produced for global needs while making good use of waste and still harvesting enough by-product bio-oil for carbon fibre production.
Could Doubts Over EVs Aid Biofuel Growth?
Several factors could boost this dual approach towards biofuels of using both waste and purpose-grown feedstock.
Among them is the problem of switching motor vehicles away from petrol and diesel. Some want to see a mass switch to electric vehicles, while others talk up the possibilities of hydrogen. But there remain barriers to a transition.
As the GXO Future of Transport report indicates, the transition to cleaner, greener fuels faces major challenges on the grounds of cost, infrastructure challenges and uncertainty over the future of fuel technologies. These are constraining the uptake of EVs.
Some of these are very familiar issues:
- Questions over the supply of lithium for EV batteries
- Uncertainty over the performance of EV batteries
- Concerns about there being sufficient chargers, leading to range anxiety
- Doubts over whether hydrogen or other new alternatives will be viable
As long as such concerns remain, biofuels may thrive and grow. It may even be that if the sector can gain extra revenues by supplying carbon fibre manufacturers with raw materials, this may help them keep the costs of biofuel down, further helping the motor fuel transition.
