Melbourne Energy Institute

As energy and fuel demand increases, alternatives to non-renewable fossil fuels will attract huge demand. Biomass, which encompasses a range of detritus including plant matter (trees, agricultural crops, algae, wood and wood residues, grasses), animal manure, industrial by-products and municipal waste residues, has regained attention in recent years because of its potential to produce renewable, carbon neutral energy.

Certain kinds of biomass can be converted into valuable biofuels containing the high energy density required for transport use. Fats and oils from oil seed crops, food waste, and even algae, can be chemically converted to biodiesel. Bioethanol is produced by the microbial fermentation of the sugars and complex carbohydrates that make up the bulk of biomass materials (much like the conversion of sugars to alcohol in beer and wine).

Biofuels have the potential to supplement fossil fuels as a transport fuel, and to do so with little or no net CO2 emission. However, the use of bioethanol and biodiesel in Australia is limited by a number of factors including the lack of appropriate feedstocks (biofuels production), inefficient conversion technologies (biofuels processing) and vehicle design (biofuels utilisation).

The University of Melbourne Energy Research Institute has assembled a multidisciplinary team with the ability to tackle these challenges. Our primary goals are to foster the production of woody and agricultural biomass in a sustainable, socially-responsible manner; to develop technologies for efficient fermentation of ligno-cellulosic biomass and the downstream processing of fuels from ligno-cellulosic and algal biomass; and to develop engines capable of working at high efficiency regardless of fuel composition.

Research Themes

Biofuels

Woody biomass provides an essential new biofuels resource opportunity for our region.  University of Melbourne researchers are targeting fast growing plantation eucalypts and nitrogen fixing native acacias for the development of dedicated energy crops.  Genomics-based tree improvement effort, research into satellite guided silviculture and forest management are exploring opportunities for the efficient production of woody biomass on marginal or degraded land.  Forest and ecosystem science research further investigates the impact that large-scale energy crop plantings or forestry waste utilisation might have on a sustainable society including important issues such as water availability, biodiversity and greenhouse gas production.

The processing of lignocellulose to fuels is a major challenge, presently costing two to three times more than conventional fuel production from crops such as sugar cane.  Teams at the School of Botany and the School of Engineering have extensive experience in the structural characterisation, biosynthesis and extraction of polysaccharides (cellulose/hemi-cellulose), lipids, proteins and lignin from plant biomass, including cereal biomass and algal biomass.  The research teams have also developed enzymic approaches for the degradation of these components to their constituent monomers.  A key step in the realisation of outcomes in the biofuels area is the separation of biomass from water and the separation of multicomponent mixtures of molecules to achieve purified products.  The team has extensive experience in the removal of particulates from water using coagulation followed by centrifugal and filtration based technologies as well as membrane separations technologies for product concentration and separations.  A number of process routes have been investigated for the non-enzymic degradation and separation of biomass components.

The combustion of biofuel poses complex challenges.  Biofuels can exhibit significantly different combustion properties to conventional fuels, and some of these properties are presently unknown.  Further the biofuel content in blended fuels can vary widely and thus the properties of these blends are often uncertain.  Melbourne University research in internal combustion engines therefore focuses on two aspects.  First, determine how engines should be designed to obtain best performance from particular biofuel blends.  Second, develop smart control systems that can modify the engine control in response to varying fuel composition.  This work is being undertaken with several industry partners through the University of Melbourne Advanced centre for Automotive Research (ACART, www.acart.com.au).  ACART facilities at the University include a ‘transient engine dynamometer’, which is enabling for this research amongst Australian public research organizations.

Projects