The Ontario government is pouring another $7.5 million into research for biofuels that can be made from agricultural waste such as corn husks and manure instead of food crops.
With concerns mounting that biofuels are taking food out of people's mouths and pushing prices higher, the government will today announce $5 million for a new biofuels institute at the University of Western Ontario in London, sources told the Toronto Star.
Another $2.5 million will go toward a demonstration project on a farm outside of London that is turning manure and waste water into biogas, producing enough to power about 800 homes.
"There is a huge demand now for more sustainable biofuels," said a source familiar with the announcement, to be made this morning by Research and Innovation Minister John Wilkinson in London.
"There are researchers and labs all across the province that are already working on this."
One scientist active in the field said the first generation of biofuels, such as ethanol based on the sugar in kernels of corn, has been relatively easy to develop, but the goal is to find a more efficient way of developing fuels from waste, such as corn husks and stalks, which aren't used as food.
"It's a whole lot trickier," said University of Guelph professor Anthony Clarke, noting it is more difficult to isolate the energy in cellulose – the material in stalks and husks that gives the plant its strength – than it is to extract the energy contained within the sugars of the kernel.
He calls that process the "Holy Grail" for researchers in the quest for new fuels to replace fossil-based fuels.
"We need to boost the efficiency and make it cost effective … a breakthrough could come tomorrow, or it could take another five years," he added.
The biogas project, located at Stanton Farms near the hamlet of Ilderton, is a collaboration between UWO, the University of Guelph and the University of Waterloo.
It uses a biodigester system that turns manure and waste water into a gas that can be used as an energy source.
Aside from working on fuels, the new Institute for Chemicals and Fuels from Alternate Resources at UWO's experimental field station will look at ways to use a process called pyrolysis for turning agricultural waste such as corn husks into organic insecticides, fertilizers and pesticides.
The institute is working with a company from nearby Dorchester called Agri-Therm Ltd., which is a spinoff of UWO's engineering faculty that has developed and patented a pyrolysis machine.
The company is taking it on a demonstration tour for potential customers this summer.
There is a huge potential for biofuels using tonnes and tonnes of plant material that is otherwise going to waste, said Clarke, who is working on a $600,000, three-year study on how to break down cellulose in plants into fuel, funded in part by the Ontario government.
Garbage dumps, he adds, are full of materials containing cellulose that have the potential to generate energy if the right technologies can be developed.
But Clarke said such biofuels are a "stopgap measure" to replace oil, gasoline and natural gas for the time being.
"They're just supplementing our dependence on fossil fuels," he added, noting hydrogen, solar and other renewable fuels remain better long-term options.
