Students Challenged to Address Global Energy Needs
Global Venture Challenge 2008 (GVC) is an educational event designed to foster entrepreneurial spirit by engaging students, industry, government and the investment community in the discovery and development of innovative ideas. This year’s event focused on one of the world’s most critical issues—energy. Semi-finalists from 14 teams competed for a top award of $25,000 by submitting technology-based business plans specific to meeting the needs of bioenergy, energy efficiency and renewable fuels.
Team: Bio-Additives
Team Members: Howard Chou, Jeffrey Dietrich, Eric Steen, Shruti Yadav
Faculty Advisors: Jay Keasling
Topic: Renewable Energy
Product or Service: A broad set of novel bio-additives that can be mixed with petroleum-based fuels or biofuels to improve their performance.
Pictured (Back, L to R) are Jeffrey Dietrich, Shruti Yadav, Eric Steen, and Howard Chou of the University of California, Berkeley, “Bio-Additives” team. High-resolution version of photo
Taking a road not traveled by most biofuel developers, the University of California, Berkeley, “Bio-Additives” team is seeking to enhance the performance of existing petroleum-based fuels rather than replace them.
Their product is a broad set of novel bio-additives that can be mixed with petroleum-based fuels to improve their performance. The bio-additives they’ve identified are all products of metabolic pathways in nature; they can be produced fermentatively from renewable feedstocks. Bio-additives can improve fuel performance by acting as detergents, oxygenates, lubricants and the like.
Many current and next-generation biofuels are developed to directly replace petroleum-derived fuels but are not completely compatible with existing transportation infrastructures, especially when used at higher concentrations.
Taking a different approach, the U.C. Berkeley team is identifying compounds that can be blended with fuels—gasoline, E10 and E85, for example—to enhance an existing fuel’s performance. Developed for fuel enhancement, bio-additives can produce more gains in performance at lower concentrations. Also, in contrast to existing petroleum-derived fuel additives, the bio-additive technology is both green and renewable.
Fuel additives now in use, primarily MTBE and ethanol, are blended with gasoline primarily by the major petroleum companies, which will be the customer group for the U.C. Berkeley team’s product. Since the product can be used with straight petroleum-based fuels as well as those blended with other types of biofuels, it is compatible with the industry’s existing blending and distribution infrastructure.
Currently, a large market for renewable bio-additives is in place due to the federal government’s renewable fuel standard (4.66 percent in 2008). Existing additives on the market are not renewable, while biofuels now on the market exhibit performance problems when blended at higher concentrations.
The bio-additives being developed by the U.C. Berkeley team are both renewable and performance-enhancing, qualities that increase the value of the final product. As MTBE is phased out, the demand for new additives will grow.
The size of the bio-additives market is estimated to be $15 billion annually. The U.C. Berkeley team estimates its market target penetration will be 1 percent—$150 million, or 50 billion gallons, which is equivalent to one biorefinery.
Market size is predicted to expand to $52.5 billion by 2015, while decreased costs associated with optimization of host strains for bio-additives and production processes would enable further penetration into the biofuel industry.