Attended a workshop recently on Bioenergy and Biomass Utilisation organised by ICES in collaboration with A*Star Singapore. I'll try and summarise their research outputs here. ICES has been exploring 2nd Generation Biofuels, i.e. derived from non-food crops. I drew up a diagram to better explain things below:
Current research and Development team in ICES have made some fascinating discoveries However i think they have some way to go in order to commercialise these technologies.
- In the generation of biofuels via biological process: A single species of Clostridium has been identified as highest yielding strain capable of producing butanol at 29% yield.
- Membrane based pervaporation was successfully demonstrated to yield 99.5% alcohol from fermentation broth. This membrane technology is currently being explored for commercialisation.
- Novel biocatalysts (enzymes from fungal strains) for biomass hydrolysis and sugar fermentation were identified and tested with Oil palm empty fruit bunch. Results show 84% conversion rate.
I believe there is a great potential to convert biomass from Palm-Oil kernel into biofuels. We are not exploring these options right now because it is too expensive a process for its conversion. That is simply the reason, it is not economical although it is the right thing to do instead of their current practice of dumping underground or burning it off.
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