Thailand: Aquatic weed may feed biofuel boom

Thailand: Aquatic weed may feed biofuel boom

A Thai researcher has succeeded in producing ethanol from water hyacinth and
is aiming to develop the technology needed to commercialise the fuel.

The discovery is one day expected to cut the production costs of biofuel and
help reduce huge imports of crude oil, of which Thailand is a net importer.

Asst Prof Jirasak Kongkiattikajorn has been at the helm of this project
since 2011, when global oil prices were surging towards US$100 a barrel.

High prices forced oil consuming countries to seek alternative biofuels
using crops blended with pure petrol, both to reduce import costs and help
the environment.

By the time oil prices spiralled to their peak, Thailand had strongly
promoted the use of ethanol and biofuel produced from sugar cane, cassava
and palm oil as new renewable energy choices.

Rising demand for biofuel, however, created another problem: producers began
competing to seize a larger share of the crops needed for their product.

That has caused a sugar cane supply shortage in the sugar industry, a crude
palm oil shortage in the cooking oil industry and a cassava shortage for
exporters of tapioca.

The sudden shortfalls in crops has at times led to rising food prices as
well as food smuggling.

"That's why my team and I thought about producing ethanol from something
that no one wants. And then the idea of using water hyacinths came to me,"
said Asst Prof Jirasak, referring to the aquatic weed that is normally found
and removed from waterways, canals and rivers across the country.

The plant grows so prolifically, in fact, that millions of tonnes are
dredged up every year to keep them from disrupting water systems.

Water hyacinth, which is native to the Amazon basin, is often considered a
highly problematic invasive species outside of its native range.

It is known in Thai as phak tob java, or Java veggie, and was brought into
Thailand for the first time in 1901, when Thailand's King Rama V visited
Java and found that most of the royal consorts and ladies in waiting at the
Java palace had adorned themselves with the flowers of water hyacinths.
Having found the flowers to be beautiful, the royal family had the plants
brought back to Thailand.

But due to their fast rate of proliferation and their tendency to clog up
waterways, the once exotic flower quickly became an unwanted weed.

"If we can produce ethanol from such an unwanted plant, it means we don't
have to pay anything for it, apart from the technology used in processing
the fuel. We can completely eliminate raw material costs," said Asst Prof
Jirasak.

Sponsored by the National Research Council of Thailand, Asst Prof Jirasak
worked with his team at King Mongkut's University of Technology Thonburi,
seeking a way to turn the plant into ethanol.

"The principle of producing ethanol is to transform carbohydrates into
monosaccharide before adding a specific yeast that further changes
monosaccharide into a bioalcohol or ethanol," he said.

But water hyacinths, which are primarily comprised of fibre, are lacking in
carbohydrates.

"So our task is to turn the fibre from water hyacinths into carbohydrates,
which requires complicated processes and advanced technology," said Asst
Prof Jirasak.

He said to produce ethanol from the fresh water weed, the plant needed to be
chopped, ground and dried to turn the fibrous material into powder.

Then, an acid is added which turns that powder into a monosaccharide, after
which yeast is used to help transform the monosaccharide into bioalcohol.

"The last step is to distil the bioalcohol so that it becomes pure ethanol
which is ready to be blended with benzene and sold to motorists," said Asst
Prof Jirasak.

Since the water weed contains very few carbohydrates, the study found that
1,000 kilogrammes of the weed are needed to produces 25 litres of ethanol,
which makes it difficult to obtain economies of scale at this point.

Up to 50 litres of ethanol, by contrast, can be generated from 1,000kg
cassava or molasses.

Another factor is the advanced technology needed to produce weed-based
ethanol. The prohibitive costs implicit in that have, to this point, made
biofuel from water hyacinths uncompetitive.

"We need to work further to cut production costs and make it worth investing
in before, I hope, eventually commercialising it over the next several
years," he said.

Asst Prof Jirasak said technology itself is not the major stumbling block,
as he is confident that the methods needed to develop the fuel effectively
will be forthcoming.

"The major problem is the energy-consuming behaviour of people, who have a
tendency to overlook means of saving energy when global oil prices are
cheap," he said.

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Ref:
http://www.bangkokpost.com/business/news/1117941/aquatic-weed-may-feed-biofu
el-boom

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John Diecker
APT Consulting Group Co., Ltd.

www.aptthailand.com