Cellulose, Maginot Line of Plants. Shoud it be Tackled or Avoided for Biofuels Production?

--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)

Energy for Transportation

Transportation is the movement of people and goods from one location to another. It is an inseparable part of any society. The way of transportation has a close relationship with the way of people’s life.

The main transportation tools in modern society are cars, ships and airplanes, which are vehicles for land, water and air transportation respectively. Needless to say, it takes energy to run these vehicles.

The first energy carrier for transportation is petroleum or oil, which provided about 95% of all the energy consumed in transportation in the world and 90% in the USA in 2011. Oil is a liquid fuel, which has high energy capacity, easy to transport, and easy to handle. But oil is a fossil fuel. It was formed from plants and animals that lived on the earth millions of years ago. The resources of oil are limited and non-renewable. As global demand for oil is increasing and worldly oil production will peak in the near future and then decline, the world simply cannot produce enough oil to meet the demands of oil for transportation.

The second energy carrier for transportation is natural gas. Natural gas as a transportation fuel can be either compressed natural gas (CNG) or liquefied natural gas (LNG). There were about 14 million natural gas vehicles in the world in 2011, which accounted for about 1.4% of all vehicles running on the road. Natural gas vehicles are more expensive than gasoline-powered vehicles. But natural gas has a price advantage over oil and emits fewer greenhouse gases when burned. Because huge supply is available domestically in the USA and around the world, current and predicted future price of natural gas is much lower than that of gasoline on an energy equivalent basis. With such a price advantage as a fuel, natural gas vehicles, especially those of heavy-duty trucks and high-mileage vehicles like transit-buses and taxis, will continue to grow in the coming years.

The third energy carrier for transportation is electricity. Electricity is clean, which doesn’t cause air pollution to the driving area. Some trains and a few of cars are running on electricity. There seem no big problems to produce enough electricity for present and future use because electricity can be generated from nuclear power, solar energy, wind, tidy, water force etc., as well as from coal, natural gas and oil. But there are several barriers for widely using electricity cars. First, the energy capacity of batteries is low. Generally an electricity car can only run about 100 miles. Second, it takes hours to recharge the batteries. It can be argued that the first problem could be solved with development of more effective batteries in the future; and the second problem could be solved with building up national net of battery stations: people change their batteries at the battery stations rather than wait for the batteries to be recharged. However, key materials for making rechargeable batteries are expensive and non-renewable.

The fourth energy carrier for transportation is hydrogen. Hydrogen is widely used in space transportation, for example, sending satellites and people into space by rockets. There are also a few cars running on hydrogen. The advantage of hydrogen is clean with water as the only waste. But hydrogen is not easy to handle. The tank of a car that can store hydrogen must be able to contain high pressure, which is a technological challenge. And since hydrogen is highly flammable, cars running on hydrogen have special safety issues. It seems that in the near future, hydrogen would not be able to become a popular transportation fuel.

The fifth energy carrier for transportation is liquid biofuels. Biofuels, such as ethanol, butanol and biodiesel, are fuels produced from living organisms or biomass. Since energy in biofuels originates from solar energy through photosynthesis, biofuels are renewable. Liquid biofuels can be conveniently used in current petroleum used vehicles. The problem facing biofuels is how to produce large quantity of biofuels with low and competitive price. Current ways of producing biofuels from corn, soybean, and other crops are not the solution for the future, because their production costs are high and potentials limited. It seems the future lies in genetically modified or created bacteria or algae, which will be able to directly produce biofuels by using sunlight, water and carbon dioxide.

As renewable fuels, biofuels will play more and more important roles in transportation.

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The above is one of my 8 to 10 minute Toastmasters speeches.

A Song of War Chariots

“A song of war chariots” is a poem written by Du Fu, one of the greatest Chinese poets. Du Fu lived in the 8th century, which is about one thousand and three hundred years ago. At that time, China was engaged in several wars. Du Fu witnessed sorrow, suffering and tragedies the wars had inflicted upon people and soldiers. He was concerned about fate of the country and held great compassion for common people. This poem described sad and horrific scenes of the wars, and it also reflected Du Fu's anti-war attitude and his humanitarian value.

The second slide shows a Chinese version of the poem.

The third slide is a painting based on the poem.

The forth slide is another paining. I personally think the latter reflects more closely to what the poem described.

What I am going to read is an English translation of the poem. It was translated by Witter Bynner, an American poet. Here is the poem,

A Song of War-Chariots

The war-chariots rattle,
The war-horses whinny.
Each man of you has a bow and a quiver at his belt.
Father, mother, son, wife, stare at you going,
Till dust shall have buried the bridge beyond Changan.
They run with you, crying, they tug at your sleeves,
And the sound of their sorrow goes up to the clouds;
And every time a bystander asks you a question,
You can only say to him that you have to go.

...We remember others at fifteen sent north to guard the river
And at forty sent west to cultivate the campfarms.
The mayor wound their turbans for them when they started out.
With their turbaned hair white now, they are still at the border,
At the border where the blood of men spills like the sea --
And still the heart of Emperor Wu is beating for war.

...Do you know that, east of China's mountains, in two hundred districts
And in thousands of villages, nothing grows but weeds,
And though strong women have bent to the ploughing,
East and west the furrows all are broken down?

...Men of China are able to face the stiffest battle,
But their officers drive them like chickens and dogs.
Whatever is asked of them,
Dare they complain?
For example, this winter
Held west of the gate,
Challenged for taxes,
How could they pay?

...We have learned that to have a son is bad luck-
It is very much better to have a daughter
Who can marry and live in the house of a neighbor,
While under the sod we bury our boys.

...Go to the Blue Sea, look along the shore
At all the old white bones forsaken --
New ghosts are wailing there now with the old,
Loudest in the dark sky of a stormy day.




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Above is one of my Toastmasters speeches.

Two-minute speech at Toastmasters District 83 Executive Committee Meeting on May 7th, 2011

District Leaders and Fellow Toastmasters,

According to the World Health Organization, there are three aspects of health. They are physical health, mental health and social health. A person’s social health can only be achieved by connecting and interacting with others.

I love Toastmasters not only because it provides a wonderful environment for me to improve my English and develop my public speaking skills but also because Toastmasters is actually a bridge for me to connect myself with others and with the society.

The feeling of being a part of a community or a part of the society is important for a person’s health. In Toastmasters, every member has the opportunity to maintain and promote his social health by interacting with his fellow members and by his personal growth. And improving the social health of individuals actually also improve the social health of societies. In this respect, I believe, Toastmasters benefits not only its members, but also the society.

Microscope

In history of the earth, there have lived at least two million different species of life. But no other species like human beings have so much impact on the earth, on the environments, and on other lives. It is because of making and using of tools that make us so powerful and distinguish us from animals.

Tools extend our biological capabilities. For example, cars extend our capability of walking, telephones enable us to hear people from thousands of miles away, and telescopes make it possible for us to see far away in the space.

A microscope is a tool or an instrument that helps us to see objects that are too small to be seen with the naked eyes. Here shows a picture of a microscope. The main parts of a microscope are eyepiece lens and objective lens. And both eyepiece and objective lens are magnifying glasses.

It is recorded that as early as 2000 years ago, people already knew that some glasses or crystals with thicker in the center and thinner at the edge could make things look larger. And that was why they were called magnifying glasses. But magnifying glasses were not used much until invention of spectacles in the end of the 13th century.

In about 1590, two Dutch spectacle makers, while experimenting with several lenses in a tube, discovered that objects appeared greatly enlarged. That tube containing several lenses in it was the forerunner of both microscopes and telescopes.

Two remarkable contributions were made with microscopes in science: discovery of cells and discovery of microorganisms such as bacteria and virus. Discoveries of cells and microorganisms were milestones in development of science and had great influence in development of biology and medicine.

There are many different kinds of microscopes. But basically they belong to two kinds: optical microscopes and electron microscopes. Optical microscopes use visible light to image objects, and electron microscopes use electron beams to image objects. The magnification of an optical microscope is usually 500 to 1000 times. The maximum is 2000 times. An electron microscope can reach magnification of 2,000,000 times, under which virus and large molecules can be seen.

Here are images of pollens under microscopes. Pollens are male cells of plants. They are reason or culprits for allergy many people suffer in the spring. The left is an image of pollens under a optical microscope and the right is an image of pollens under an electronic microscope.

Microscopes are indispensable tools in fields like cell biology, microbiology, pathology including plant pathology, animal pathology and human pathology, nanoscience that deals with materials at micro level and forensic science that deals with criminal investigation etc.

Human beings have actually found another world with microscopes.

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The above is one of my Toastmasters speeches. The speech is based on a project titled "Technical Briefing".

Yu Harnesses the Yellow River

Yellow River is the mother river of China. She is the second longest river in China and the sixth in the world. It is believed that Chinese civilization originated from an area called Yellow River basin.

Yellow River was both China’s pride and China’s sorrow. Yellow River was a blessing because it provided water and fertile soil for agriculture and made it possible to build cities along the river. Yellow River was a pain to Chinese people because it was prone to flooding. Historical documents recorded that in last 3000 years, Yellow River has flooded for more than one thousand and five hundred times, a flood every two years！Millions of people had been killed and hundreds of cities had been ruined by Yellow River floods.

In about 2100 BC, that is more than 4000 years ago, Yellow River flooded greatly and frequently. At that time, in the area of present China lived numerous tribes and they allied together. The floods caused great suffering to people.

Gun, chief of a tribe, was initially selected to lead people of all tribes to manage the river. Gun led people fighting floods for nine years but didn't succeed. Gun's method was building dams and levees to block the floods. The dams and levees were built higher and higher, but flooding water was also getting higher and higher; eventually water overflowed the dams and destroyed them.

Gun was dismissed after his failure. Yu, Gun’s son, was then assigned as chief to continue leading people to fight floods. Yu got the lessons from his father. He first made a thorough survey on the geographic features along the entire river and the flooding courses. Then he assembled people dredging rivers making water flow faster and building new rivers based on the natural flooding courses and led the flooding water into the sea.

It is said Yu assembled and put 270,000 people into action; and they worked hard for 13 years. Finally the floods were subdued.

Yu was a dedicated leader. He was just married when he was appointed as the chief. In 13 years, he never entered his home even though he passed his home for three times.

By harnessing Yellow River, Yu not only subdued the floods, but also united people. Later, he founded the first dynasty of China, Xia.

Yu was arguably the first king of China. People respectfully call him DaYu , which means Yu, the great.

Today, I tell the story about Yu. It is not because he was the founder of first dynasty of China, nor because he had a great influence in the development of Chinese civilization, but because of his method of fighting floods.

Facing rampant flooding water, Yu's method was not to block it but channel it. This is something worth remembering and thinking.

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This is one of my Toastmasters' Speeches; and this speech is based on a project titled "Bringing History to Life".

Utilization of Microalgae for Biofuels Production

As we know, modern society relies heavily on fossil fuels. 80-90% of all energy consumed in the world is from fossil fuels. Fossil fuels include oil, natural gas and coal. They originated from plants and animals that lived on the earth millions of years ago. The resources of fossil fuels are limited and non-renewable.

The first slide shows the history and the future prediction of worldly oil production. It is generally believed that worldly oil production will peak in less than 10 years. As you can see from the figure, USA and Russia passed their oil production peaks decades ago, in 1970s and 1990s respectively.

After world oil production peaks and declines, the world will face a severe situation. The situation is that the world simply cannot produce enough fossil oil to meet the demand from transportation.

This oil gap for transportation has to be filled. Biofuels are one of the candidates to fill this oil gap. Biofuels are derived from biomass. And biomass used for producing biofuels can be grains, hay, weeds, woods and others.

The first generation biofuels derived from crops. For example, in USA, corns are used for producing ethanol; in Brazil sugarcane are used for producing ethanol; and soybeans are widely used for producing biodiesel. But corn, sugarcane and soybean are crops. The main problem facing crop-derived biofuels is conflict between food production and biofuels production. Other problems concerning crop-based biofuels production include deforestation, high production cost and limited potential. Take the limited potential for example: Even if all the corn currently produced in the USA were used for producing ethanol, it could only replace about 15% of oil currently consumed in the USA.

Microalgae are single-celled lower plants that make seas, lakes and rivers green. When you walk around a natural pond in the spring and summer, you can find the surface of water is covered by green stuff. That are microalgae. Microalgae are "plants" because they can grow by using sunlight, CO2 and water.

There are several advantages of using micro-algae for biofuels production over crops.

First, microalgae grow much faster than land plants. It can grow 7 to 30 times faster than the next best crop. Under the optimum conditions, microalgae can double its biomass in several hours.

Second, cultivation of microalgae doesn’t compete for farmland. Algae can be grown on land that is not suitable for crops, for instance, arid land, land with excessively saline soil, and drought-stricken land. Moreover, 70.8% of the earth’s surface is cover by water. Microalgae can be cultivated in open ponds, and even in the sea.

Third, algae-based biofuels are CO2 neutral, which does not deteriorate Global Warming effect. Algae absorbs CO2 from atmospheres when it grows and the CO2 is released back into atmospheres when the biofuels is used.

Fourth, microalgae can be harvested daily or any time needed, not like crops that are limited by their long growth cycle.

The main challenges facing algae-based biofuels are lack of cost-effective technologies to cultivate, harvest microalgae and to process microalgae into biofuels. But this is not strange. Human Beings have been planting crops, such as corn, sugarcane and soybean, for at least five thousand years, but cultivating and processing microalgae for biofuels is still in experimental stage. There is a lot of space to develop an improve algal cultivation, harvesting and processing technologies.

Utilizing microalgae for biofuels production will bring many benefits to the society and the country, such as breaking the USA’s dependence on foreign oil, creating a new source of green energy and adding job opportunities.

Microalgae are one of the most promising sources for biofuels production. But to make it reality, renovation of technology in this area is needed. And to renovate the technology, more money and more human resources should be invested.

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The above is one of 8 - 10 min speeches I delivered in my Toastmasters club. The speech is based on AC#2: The Proposal.