Fossil fuels are so last century. Corn-based ethanol remains controversial, as large-scale production of corn for fuel affects prices and the global food supply.
Luckily, a new fuel source is being tested and it’s not one you might readily guess.
According to this report, “Boeing is partnering with South African Airlines (SAA) to make jet fuel from tobacco, which would be a carbon-neutral feedstock.
The fuel will be made from a hybrid tobacco plant called Solaris and is to be produced by alternative jet fuel maker SkyNRG, which currently supplies biofuel to KLM Royal Dutch Airlines for flights between New York City and Amsterdam.”
The plants are nicotine-free and test farming has already begun in South Africa. When could we see this on the market? According to this article, sometime in the “next few years”.
The potential benefits are huge, including helping farmers make a decent living growing a biofuel that reduces climate changing carbon emissions and less pressure on tobacco farmers to sell their crop to cigarette companies is an added bonus.
Boeing has been working on another renewable jet-fuel project called “green diesel,” made by splitting molecules from waste oils and fats with hydrogen.
The aircraft maker isn’t the only one researching tobacco as an alternative fuel source, however. Christer Jansson, a senior staff scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in northern California, is leading a research team to produce hydrocarbons from tobacco leaves, molecules similar to those in fossil fuels.
A $4.9 million grant from the Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) is helping to sponsor the effort.
With only 16 months to demonstrate whether the process works, at which point DOE will either approve further work or pull its funding, the pressure is on for Jansson and his team to demonstrate a viable product.
If the team is successful, the plan is to make it commercially available to the public but if the DOE decides to pull the plug, Jansson’s research team will have to stop their work and return any remaining money.
The good news is, tobacco is plentiful and capable of producing multiple harvests a year. According to one report citing the U.S. Census Bureau, nearly 7 million tons are produced throughout the world annually.
One of the interested parties paying close attention to Jansson’s research is the Kentucky Tobacco Research and Development Center. Because Kentucky ranks second only to North Carolina in U.S. tobacco production, by studying the development of new uses of tobacco, the organization has a high stake in seeing a positive outcome for tobacco as the new biofuel.
With fewer smokers in the United States, this could provide a much-needed economic boost to tobacco farmers, as well.
Jansson admits that his research team faces a tight deadline, “But we’re very confident we can produce the molecules we’re looking for,” he said. We wish them luck!
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