Why are you looking to move towards using waste material for biofuels?
We believe in order to create sustainable biofuels, the focus has to be away from edible feedstock. Instead, we have to utilise waste streams from agriculture and sewage for example. Unfortunately, these materials have very low energy density per tonne so shipping this type of biofuel at the moment takes too much energy and makes no financial sense. How do you get round this problem and deliver a commercial proposition? The answer is appropriate localised scale operations. Thermo-chemical systems work much faster than enzymatic systems – a parallel can be drawn with burning and digesting material – and that speed means you can develop much smaller scale reactors. Then refinery modules could be dispatched to the location of feedstock making the whole process economically viable. Biofuels are getting a lot of flak at the moment. How do you see the future of the industry developing? I think we’ll see a shift towards greater use of waste matter and perhaps algae, but not anytime soon. Ther
