• HOME
  • NEWS
  • EXPLORE
    • CAREER
      • Companies
      • Jobs
    • EVENTS
    • iGEM
      • News
      • Team
    • PHOTOS
    • VIDEO
    • WIKI
  • BLOG
  • COMMUNITY
    • FACEBOOK
    • INSTAGRAM
    • TWITTER
Tuesday, September 2, 2025
BIOENGINEER.ORG
No Result
View All Result
  • Login
  • HOME
  • NEWS
  • EXPLORE
    • CAREER
      • Companies
      • Jobs
        • Lecturer
        • PhD Studentship
        • Postdoc
        • Research Assistant
    • EVENTS
    • iGEM
      • News
      • Team
    • PHOTOS
    • VIDEO
    • WIKI
  • BLOG
  • COMMUNITY
    • FACEBOOK
    • INSTAGRAM
    • TWITTER
  • HOME
  • NEWS
  • EXPLORE
    • CAREER
      • Companies
      • Jobs
        • Lecturer
        • PhD Studentship
        • Postdoc
        • Research Assistant
    • EVENTS
    • iGEM
      • News
      • Team
    • PHOTOS
    • VIDEO
    • WIKI
  • BLOG
  • COMMUNITY
    • FACEBOOK
    • INSTAGRAM
    • TWITTER
No Result
View All Result
Bioengineer.org
No Result
View All Result
Home NEWS Science News

Dual-purpose biofuel crops could extend production, increase profits

Bioengineer by Bioengineer
January 10, 2017
in Science News
Reading Time: 3 mins read
0
Share on FacebookShare on TwitterShare on LinkedinShare on RedditShare on Telegram
IMAGE

Credit: Haley Ahlers/PETROSS

Today many biofuel refineries operate for only seven months each year, turning freshly harvested crops into ethanol and biodiesel. When supplies run out, biorefineries shut down for the other five months. However, according to recent research, dual-purpose biofuel crops could produce both ethanol and biodiesel for nine months of the year–increasing profits by as much as 30%.

"Currently, sugarcane and sweet sorghum produce sugar that may be converted to ethanol," said co-lead author Stephen Long, Gutgsell Endowed Professor of Plant Biology and Crop Sciences at the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology at the University of Illinois. "Our goal is to alter the plants' metabolism so that it converts this sugar in the stem to oil–raising the levels in current cultivars from 0.05% oil, not enough to convert to biodiesel, to the theoretical maximum of 20% oil. With 20% oil, the plant's sugar stores used for ethanol production would be replaced with more valuable and energy dense oil used to produce biodiesel or jet fuel."

A paper published in Industrial Biotechnology simulated the profitability of Plants Engineered to Replace Oil in Sugarcane and Sweet Sorghum (PETROSS) with 0%, 5%, 10%, and 20% oil. They found that growing sorghum in addition to sugarcane could keep biorefineries running for an additional two months, increasing production and revenue by 20-30%.

Today, PETROSS sugarcane produces 13% oil by dry weight, 8% of which is the kind of oil used to make biodiesel. At 20% oil, sugarcane would produce 13 times more oil–and six times more profit–per acre than soybeans.

A biorefinery plant processing PETROSS sugarcane with 20% oil would have a 24% international rate of return–a metric used to measure the profitability of potential investments–which increases to 29% when PETROSS sorghum with 20% oil is processed for an additional two months during the sugarcane offseason.

"When a sugarcane plant has to shut down, the company is still paying for capital utilization; they have spent millions of dollars on equipment that isn't used for five months," said co-lead author Vijay Singh, Director of the Integrated Bioprocessing Research Laboratory at Illinois. "We propose bringing in another crop, sweet sorghum, to put that equipment to use and decrease capital utilization costs."

By decreasing capital utilization costs, the cost to produce ethanol and biodiesel drops by several cents per liter. Processing lipid-sorghum during the lipid-cane off-season increased annual biofuel production by 20 to 30%, thereby increasing total revenue without any additional investment in equipment.

The simulations in this paper accounted for the equipment required to retrofit ethanol plants to produce biodiesel. In the U.S., about 90 percent of ethanol plants are already retrofitted to produce biodiesel. According to Singh, in places like Brazil where they produce a large amount of sugarcane, it makes sense to retrofit ethanol plants. "Our study shows that it is cost effective to do it."

###

For more information about opportunities to collaborate or invest in this work, contact Vijay Singh at [email protected] or 217-333-9510.

The paper "Techno-Economic Analysis of Biodiesel and Ethanol Production from Lipid-Producing Sugarcane and Sweet Sorghum" was published by Industrial Biotechnology (doi:10.1089/ind.2016.0013). Co-authors include: Haibo Huang, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, and Tom Clemente, University of Nebraska.

This work and PETROSS are currently funded by the U.S. Department of Energy's Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E), which supports initial research for high-impact energy technologies to show proof of concept before private-sector investment. Learn more about PETROSS at http://petross.illinois.edu/.

Media Contact

Claire Benjamin
[email protected]
217-244-0941
@IGBIllinois

http://www.igb.uiuc.edu

############

Story Source: Materials provided by Scienmag

Share12Tweet8Share2ShareShareShare2

Related Posts

Culturally Tailored Tools for Early Eating Disorder Detection

September 2, 2025
blank

Assessing Clonal Fidelity in Pterocarpus Marsupium Plantlets

September 2, 2025

MRI Radiomics and Tumor Microenvironment in Cervical Cancer

September 2, 2025

Evaluating Acupuncture Guidelines for Chronic Pain Relief

September 2, 2025
Please login to join discussion

POPULAR NEWS

  • blank

    Breakthrough in Computer Hardware Advances Solves Complex Optimization Challenges

    153 shares
    Share 61 Tweet 38
  • Molecules in Focus: Capturing the Timeless Dance of Particles

    143 shares
    Share 57 Tweet 36
  • New Drug Formulation Transforms Intravenous Treatments into Rapid Injections

    117 shares
    Share 47 Tweet 29
  • Do people and monkeys see colors the same way?

    112 shares
    Share 45 Tweet 28

About

We bring you the latest biotechnology news from best research centers and universities around the world. Check our website.

Follow us

Recent News

Culturally Tailored Tools for Early Eating Disorder Detection

Assessing Clonal Fidelity in Pterocarpus Marsupium Plantlets

MRI Radiomics and Tumor Microenvironment in Cervical Cancer

  • Contact Us

Bioengineer.org © Copyright 2023 All Rights Reserved.

Welcome Back!

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password?

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In
No Result
View All Result
  • Homepages
    • Home Page 1
    • Home Page 2
  • News
  • National
  • Business
  • Health
  • Lifestyle
  • Science

Bioengineer.org © Copyright 2023 All Rights Reserved.