Novo Silico for Biofuel Production…
Your Situation: With the progressing impact of climate change, the replacement of fossil fuels by renewable biofuels is becoming increasingly urgent. Maritime biofuel requirements appear relatively relaxed, allowing variants such as fatty acid methyl ester (FAME), hydrotreated vegetable oil (HVO), purified & liquefied biogas (bio-LNG), alcohols and ammonia. The chemical, performance and emission specifications for automotive and aviation biofuel are much more restrictive. Production of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) by certified biochemical and thermochemical technologies, in particular, is limited by availability of suitable substrates. Certified renewable lipid substrate (e.g. vegetable oil, animal fat), for instance, is highly insufficient for any substantial coverage of air traffic.
Our Proposal: We design new biochemical or thermochemical pathways for certified biofuel production based on new types of biomass substrates.
- In a recent project, we have designed an augmented alginate lyase enzyme in silico for accelerated conversion of brown algae Sargassum natans to pyruvate for microalgal production of alkane-based SAF.
- Brown algae are currently abundantly available in the Caribbean, with a total annual supply of 30m metric tons.
- This algal SAF production pathway can also be applied to green algae Ulva lactuca, with ample annual supply e.g. in China and Brittany.
- The processed macroalgal substrate can also be fermented to alcohol and thermochemically converted to SAF with the well-established alcohol-to-jet (AtJ) pathway.
