Addressing the issues

Biofuels production with TMO technology addresses several complex environmental problems. Some of the key green drivers of TMO’s technology are sustainability, the use of renewable resources and the drive to carbon emission reduction.

It has become impossible for governments or companies to negate the impact of the ‘triple bottom line’ of economic, environmental and social sustainability.

Sustainability

Sustainability is the use of renewable resources, preserving the natural environment and the world’s resources for future generations whilst still delivering economic growth.
  • TMO technology will enable the use of widely available, locally grown renewable resources reducing transportation impacts.
  • TMO technology will enable producers to use low value biomass waste, non-food energy crops and lignocellulosic biomass as feedstocks instead.
  • TMO technology has minimal waste products, poses no hazards to its surroundings and uses sustainable raw materials.

Renewable resources

Current production of bioethanol relies on food crops such as sugar cane, sugar beet, wheat or corn. The supply of such food crops is fundamentally limited by the land and resources available for agriculture. Prices are too high and supply is too scarce to provide for the growing fuel ethanol market.

Waste biomass (e.g. straw, biological municipal waste, paper pulp effluent and other agricultural wastes) and crops specially grown for their high biomass content are ideal ethanol production materials. Such sources are described as “lignocellulosic biomass” and can be converted efficiently to ethanol with TMO technology.

Climate change

Through the Kyoto Treaty and various carbon trading schemes there is growing pressure to reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. TMO’s goal is to provide alternative fuels and chemicals whose emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases are close to zero. TMO technology’s potential contribution to CO2 abatement via renewable transportation fuels is vast.

The transportation sector produces 30% of the world’s annual carbon emissions. With rapid growth predicted future increases will have major environmental implications, particularly in rapidly growing developing countries.

Automobiles contribute very significantly to the emissions of greenhouse gases, notably CO2 (around 2.5 kg of CO2 is produced for every litre of gasoline used). Transportation is the only sector in which carbon emissions have risen since 1990.

Various studies have determined the potential for reducing pollution by using cellulose-derived ethanol as over 100% if the biomass remaining after the ethanol process is used to produce electricity. This advanced technology is TMO’s forte.

Links

This page includes links to documents in Portable Document File (PDF) format. To read PDF documents you may need to download the free Adobe Acrobat Reader. For PDF accessibility help, visit Access Adobe. These links will open in a new browser window.

Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA)
Biomass as Feedstock for a Bioenergy and Bioproducts Industry: The Technical Feasibility of a Billion-ton Annual Supply (PDF, 2.8 MB, opens in a new window)

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