{"id":4616,"date":"2014-03-21T00:24:36","date_gmt":"2014-03-21T00:24:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.oilgae.com\/blog\/?p=4616"},"modified":"2014-09-04T09:32:43","modified_gmt":"2014-09-04T09:32:43","slug":"boeing-biofuel-breakthrough-this-is-a-big-deal-interview-with-boeings-biofuel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.oilgae.com\/blog\/2014\/03\/boeing-biofuel-breakthrough-this-is-a-big-deal-interview-with-boeings-biofuel.html","title":{"rendered":"Boeing Biofuel Breakthrough \u2014 This Is A BIG Deal (Interview With Boeing\u2019s Biofuel"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"images<\/a>Here are some excerpts on the advancements made by Boeing with respect to algae biofuels. This article has been adapted from Clean Technica.<\/p>\n

n recent years, Boeing has \u201chappened across\u201d a new type of biofuel, a biofuel with some amazing natural benefits. First of all, the biofuel comes from a type of plant \u2014\u00a0halophytes<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 that can grow in the desert, not taking up valuable arable land. Furthermore, these halophytes can be irrigated with saltwater, again solving one of the main downsides of conventional biofuels \u2014 their tremendous freshwater needs. For these reasons and others, it seems that halophyte biofuels can be produced at a low, competitive cost.<\/p>\n

Notably, this big discovery wasn\u2019t made purely by accident. Several years ago, when Boeing decided that it wanted to find a better fuel source than oil or conventional biofuels, it aimed to find a fuel that was genuinely sustainable. It didn\u2019t want to run into the problems with powerful stakeholders or the environment that corn ethanol ran into. Sustainability was the focus all the way down to design. When Boeing ran across the possibility of creating biofuel from these unique halophytes, back in 2009, it found that there were actually no patents related to such a process (globally). Can you imagine the feeling?\u00a0Boeing then started the\u00a0Sustainable Bioenergy Research Consortium<\/a>\u00a0in Abu Dhabi, partnering with Masdar Institute, Etihad Airways, and Honeywell\u2019s UOP to work on researching the biofuel\u2019s potential.<\/p>\n

News has gotten even better since then, in a couple of ways:<\/p>\n

1) Aquaculture has been growing worldwide as a solution to rapidly declining fish stocks in open waters. However, aquaculture comes with at least one big problem \u2014 it produces a tremendous waste stream. Interestingly, halophytes, can actually use aquaculture waste as a feedstock.<\/p>\n

2) A key process in creating biofuel from cellulosic plants is separating the lignin from the sugars (the sugars are what get converted into fuel). About six months ago, Boeing and crew (corny pun intended) discovered that this process was actually much easier with halophytes than it was with other cellulosic plants used for biofuel.<\/p>\n

Full Interview from this page \u00a0http:\/\/cleantechnica.com\/2014\/01\/27\/boeing-biofuel-breakthrough-big-deal\/#byzVOlo8rZvcVC7k.99<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here are some excerpts on the advancements made by Boeing with respect to algae biofuels. This article has been adapted from Clean Technica. n recent years, Boeing has \u201chappened across\u201d a new type of biofuel, a biofuel with some amazing natural benefits. First of all, the biofuel comes from a type of plant \u2014\u00a0halophytes\u00a0\u2014 that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":5041,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[613],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4616","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-insights-and-perspectives"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.oilgae.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4616","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.oilgae.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.oilgae.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.oilgae.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.oilgae.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4616"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.oilgae.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4616\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5043,"href":"http:\/\/www.oilgae.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4616\/revisions\/5043"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.oilgae.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5041"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.oilgae.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.oilgae.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.oilgae.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}