--A Thought about Biofuels Production
It is almost always a better strategy to cooperate with biological natures of a life than to fight against them if we want to get the most of the life. Cooperating with biological natures of a life means helping it achieve its goals, and thus would avoid resistance from the life. Two fundamental natures or goals of any life are survival and reproduction. For example, bread and rice we eat are made from seeds of wheat and rice respectively. It is a nature of wheat and rice to produce seeds, and they have a natural tendency to produce as many seeds as they can because that is in favor of their reproductions. In past thousands of years, humans have successfully “catered for” this nature and “helped” wheat and rice produce much more seeds than they originally did for human benefits.
How is this principle related to biofuels production?
Cellulosic biofuels made from wood, grasses, and inedible parts of crops, are widely considered to be promising as alternative transportation fuels with great economic and environmental benefits. Cellulose is a polymer of sugar. It is produced by all plants, from single-celled algae to giant trees. Abundance of cellulose led to a logic or a natural expectation of producing fuels from cellulose. Actually, producing fuels from cellulose is not a new idea: ethanol production from cellulose began in Germany as early as in 1898. However, for plants survival, cellulose is naturally made tough for breaking down. Breaking down cellulose is like attacking the strongest point plants defend. In the past century, scientists and engineers have invented numerous physical, chemical and biological methods for breaking down cellulose. But breaking down cellulose into sugar remains difficult and the most expensive step in production of cellulosic biofuels. Besides, for survival plants spend energy transforming sugar into cellulose; and for producing cellulosic biofuels, people have to spend energy transforming cellulose back into sugar. This does not seem optimal.
It is not implied that cellulosic biofuels will not be able to make a significant impact in production of alternative transportation fuels, but more attention might be needed to give on new strategies that would cut out or avoid cellulose for producing biofuels.
(To be continued)
