What is biofuel? 

Biofuels are organic compounds that we can use to generate energy. There are various types of biofuels: solid (wood pellets, wood chips, etc.), gaseous (biogas, biohydrogen, synthesis gas), and liquid. Liquid Rashtriya Jaiv Indhan Niti are the most interesting. They can be used in internal combustion engines and jet engines, replacing petroleum-derived fuels. As a rule, these are special carbon molecules about 14-15 atoms long. They are not very common in living organisms, so we need to find the sources of such long molecules somehow. There are two ways to search. The first way is to use existing biosynthetic pathways and somehow try to optimize them.

What problems with fuel exist at the moment?

- In fact, there are a lot of problems with fuel now. We live in a world of oil, and our entire civilization is built on oil, all transport, and jet aircraft. Without this fuel, we cannot live. And here there is a big problem: oil is a fossil resource, which means that at some point, we may not have enough of its reserves suitable for industrial and commercial production. Oil will remain somewhere in deep deposits, in some economically unprofitable conditions, etc. The world is already beginning to prepare for this moment. There are two questions. First, when will that moment come? And the second question: will we have time to develop the appropriate technologies? Biofuels(Jaiv Indhan Niti 2018) are one of the candidates for such a technology of the future.

What have biofuel options there been in human history?

— The main fuel in many countries is wood. For example, about 70% of energy in Tanzania still comes from it. Of course, developed countries have gone very far from this. Wood is an exhaustible resource. If we cut down trees too quickly, then we will naturally run out of energy. Such a crisis was in England in the XVI-XVII centuries. They had huge forests. Even a proverb said that a squirrel could cross the whole country in England without jumping to the ground. But to smelt steel, it was necessary to spend charcoal. At that time, 50 kilograms of coal were needed for 1 kilogram of steel. And to get charcoal, you had to collect a lot of wood and burn it. Thus, the British cut down almost all economically viable forests. Around the beginning of the 17th century, because of this, iron smelting fell sharply in England. They began to import iron from Sweden and Russia. This happened until they discovered the next source of energy - coal. Then the industrial machine of the English Industrial Revolution started working again.

A similar situation may now arise. England had huge reserves of coal. At one time, they calculated that it would last for three thousand years, dividing the number of funds by the annual production. But in 1860, Jevons wrote the book "The Question of Coal in England," where he talked about the fact that coal consumption is increasing by 3% per year. By the end of the 20th century, coal in England will end. He was right. In England, there are only 6 large mines, and under Jevons, there were 3,000.

What came after wood?

"Oil came after the wood. At the end of the 19th century, Rudolf Diesel used vegetable oil on his engine, and it worked. Now the problem is that to provide our society with automotive fuel; we do not have enough space where we could grow crops from which vegetable oil is produced. In addition, if we start planting palms, soybeans, or rapeseed to produce fuel, we will not have enough land to grow food. Now there is a very serious problem: food versus energy. Thus, the first generation of biofuels is produced from those products. Can use for food production is a dead-end development path. The goal is to produce biofuels so that it does not in any way compete with food production. This is a second-generation biofuel. From straw, various agricultural waste, and wood, you can get the same types of biofuels as from food crops.

How efficient and viable are the first and second generations of biofuels?

— There are two main types of first and second-generation biofuels: ethanol and biodiesel derived from vegetable oils. The United States has a lot of corn, and Brazil has a lot of sugar cane, so it's very convenient to get alcohol there. . You can add it in a certain concentration to gasoline. Many cars are now being produced that can run on this kind of gasoline, on "green" gasoline with ethanol. In the US, Brazil, and Europe, first-generation biofuels are being used to boost agriculture and reduce dependence on oil.

The first and second generations of biofuels attempt to use existing capacities. Because building an industry from scratch in the capitalist world is very difficult and expensive. It is much better to use current technologies to produce alcohol and vegetable oils. The first and second-generation use these technologies. But the third generation of biofuels is a completely new thing. Photosynthetic microalgae are at the heart of the biofuel production process. They use light energy to absorb carbon dioxide from the air to produce organic compounds.

Microalgae are very small - 1, 2, 3, and 10 micrometers in diameter, and can make a very large amount of fat inside the cell - lipids. These lipids have a long carbon chain. They can be isolated and processed into biofuels. The pros are that these microalgae do not need to grow a root system, leaves, etc. That is, they are just cells with lipids inside. They grow very quickly; they can be harvested quite technologically. And now it is, of course, a very interesting direction.

What does the process of obtaining third-generation biofuels look like?

— First, you need to grow microalgae. Then this biomass needs to be harvested.

You can take it as is, put it into the installation and raise the temperature and pressure. Hydrocracking will occur, and a fraction of bio-oil will be released. We can clean it in conventional oil refineries. There is another option. We can isolate some fractions from microalgae biomass and chemically convert them into biofuel. There are many such technologies.

Microalgae can produce an order of magnitude more biofuel than conventional crops. Firstly, they do not need to synthesize roots, branches, and leaves. They are small cells. Secondly, they grow very fast. The crop grows during the long season. And to grow microalgae, you need a couple of weeks.

What is a laboratory for the production of biofuels from microorganisms?

- The basis of such a laboratory is a large installation called a "photobioreactor." They can be either open or closed. Open photobioreactors are ponds filled with dark green water; closed ones are plastic bags or plastic pipes inside which microalgae grow. When they grow up, they are collected and destroyed, the desired fraction is isolated, and then this fraction is chemically processed.

There is also the fourth generation of biofuels. This technology uses photosynthetic cyanobacteria that directly produce the final product from CO2. This method greatly improves system performance. Imagine a cell that carries out photosynthesis. She absorbed a molecule of carbon dioxide from the air, turned it into an organic compound, and then, for example, added two genes there in this cell. The enzymes encoded by these genes converted these organic compounds into ethanol, and the alcohol left the cell. After that, we can make a system in which the water's surface in the photobioreactor will be heated by sunlight, and alcohol will evaporate from it. The alcohol can then be condensed and collected. This is a very interesting development.

In Russia, of course, there are also many technologies, including those based on Soviet developments.

But we are slowed down because Russia has not yet created a biofuel market. For example, if we produce ethanol, excises will be taken from it. At the same time, it is technically possible to immediately add ethanol to gasoline at the plant and get biofuel. Discussions are underway to add 5% alcohol to gasoline.

The economic effect of this would also be positive. There are vast territories in Russia where agriculture is practiced, but it isn't easy to export grain economically. After all, we still do not have a very large domestic market compared to the areas available for the development of agriculture. It is possible, of course, to use grain as feed for livestock, but, unfortunately, our livestock breeding is still insufficiently developed. Therefore, the production of biofuels or bioplastics can become a very promising direction for the development of agriculture. The market for bioplastics is growing at a rate of about 20% per year. This is a very good topic.

What other types of biofuels are there?

The fifth-generation is currently in development. This is electrosynthesis - the use of electricity to synthesize biofuels. Some microbes can consume electricity from an electrode immersed in a solution. Potentially, they have very high efficiency. For example, the efficiency of a solar battery that you can buy in a supermarket is about 10-15%. Some microorganisms can direct up to 80% of the electrons received from the electrode to synthesize organic compounds. If we count 80% of 10-15%, then it turns out that about 8-12% of the energy of sunlight is used for the synthesis of organic compounds. It would seem not very much. But when compared with conventional photosynthesis, on which the entire biosphere exists, it has an efficiency of about 1% conversion.

What are the advantages of this generation of biofuels?

First, it is a renewable resource. . We can use it for a very long time, not paying attention to the fact that we are running out of oil or something else is happening. Secondly, let's develop technologies that do not take up land for agriculture and waste freshwater. We can increase the production of both food and biofuels. Moreover, with the help of such technologies, it is possible to obtain biopolymers, food additives, etc. . which could synthesize even food at a certain stage in the development of technology in this way.

Now the population is growing. There are about seven billion of us now. In 35 years, there will be more than nine billion of us, which is 35% more. But food, according to forecasts, humanity will consume 100% more. Unfortunately, we do not have free land of acceptable quality to double food production, so we need a global intensification of food production.

What are the main problems in the development of this direction?

— In my opinion, the main thing is creating the market. When a call is completed, private initiative is immediately involved, which is a powerful driver for developing this industry. It seems to me that the main tasks at the moment are a competent state economic policy to create a market for biofuels and biopolymers and stimulate scientific research in this area.