Tobacco Goes from Dark Side Villain to Biofuel Hero

Tobacco is about to take center stage as a renewable biofuel crop if new research from the Lawrence Berkeley Nationwide Laboratory pans out. That would be very a turnaround for tobacco, which according to the Centers for Condition Manage is accountable for one in each five deaths in the U.S. each and every year. But hey, if even Darth Vader is capable of redemption, possibly there is hope for tobacco after all.

The Berkeley biofuel breakthrough

Microbial fermentation is a promising new location of investigation in the field of biofuels, but the Berkeley group is aiming even higher. Biochemist Christer Jansson explains that the Berkeley group’s goal is to skip a handful of steps by converting the hydrocarbon molecules from tobacco straight into a fuel that is practically ready to use as a drop-in substitute for petroleum fuels:

“We want to bypass downstream processes like fermentation and generate fuels right in the crop,” says Jansson. “After the biomass is crushed, we could extract the hydrocarbon molecules, and crack them into shorter molecules, producing gasoline, diesel, or jet fuel.”

Super-tobacco for biofuel

In order for the approach to be price-efficient, the team needs to come up with a strain of tobacco that is really productive at harvesting sunlight and converting carbon dioxide to hydrocarbon molecules. They are looking to boost tobacco with genes from cyanobacteria, a microbe that previously has a solid reputation as an power harvester in the choice fuels area.

A lot more biofuel analysis on the tobacco bandwagon

Tobacco has attracted a fair amount of consideration of its own among biofuel researchers. The University of Maryland is searching into a tobacco-hosted virus for fuel cells and batteries, for example. One more angle of investigation comes from the University of Central Florida where researcher Henry Daniell is operating on a tobacco enzyme to aid convert woody biomass to ethanol. The objective is to produce a procedure that would operate on a broad selection of feedstocks, enabling refineries to take benefit of regional sources this kind of as orange crop waste in Florida.

A location in the sun for tobacco biofuel

As a non-food biofuel crop, tobacco fits in nicely with President Obama’s nationwide biofuel initiative announced last summer season, which involves partnering the U.S. Division of Agriculture, the Navy, and the Department of Energy in a push to get far more non-meals biofuel crops into production.

Tobacco also has a likely benefit more than other non-meals biofuel crops like miscanthus, switchgrass and camelina. Considering that a pretty significant sum of land is previously committed to tobacco farming, there would be no need to place new land into production to develop tobacco for biofuel. Even though the aforementioned crops are hardy and can be grown on lands not fit for meals crops, the farming of new (albeit marginal) land includes concerns that want to be addressed including habitat loss, soil loss, and transportation infrastructure.

As far as agricultural land use goes there would be no reduction of existing acreage for meals production, if mass quantities of tobacco have been diverted from the drying shed to the biofuel refinery. Of program, the price of cigarettes would probably skyrocket as a outcome of diminished domestic supply, but at least that would give the individuals at the Centers for Condition Manage something to smile about.

Image: Cigarette. License Some rights reserved by Fried Dough.

Adhere to Tina Casey on Twitter: @TinaMCasey.

Associated posts:

1. A Sustainble Recipe for Biofuel: Ethanol from Orange Peels and Tobacco


2. Tobacco Finds Redemption in New High Effectiveness Batteries and Fuel Cells


3. Glycerin Goes from Soapy Bauble to Biofuel Hero

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