Imagine a future where minerals extracted from the ground are no longer the dominant energy source instead it is wood. Source: Timberbiz
Huge eucalypt forests could provide biofuel for Bentleys and jet fuel for Boeings, while carbon-fibre car bodies could be produced from genetically engineered poplar plantations.
Gerald Tuskan is a plant geneticist working for the Oak Ridge National Laboratory near Nashville in the USA, which is bankrolled by the US Department of Energy.
He’s says that in 50 years the automotive industry could be sourcing more and more materials and energy from renewable resources – namely trees.
“One day, we’ll make and fuel our cars with trees,” said Mr Tuskan during a Joint Genome Institute speech.
He is adamant that instead of filling up your car with petrol drilled from under the earth’s crust you’d pump in Eucalyptus-based ethanol fuel.
Mr Tuskan and more than 80 researchers from 18 different countries and 30 institutions have sequenced the Eucalyptus grandis genome – from one of the world’s fastest growing trees – and have discovered that with some genetic manipulation it could provide high-octane fuel.
Simply put, biofuel feedstock is the basic material needed to create biofuels, such as ethanol, which is currently sourced from corn, as an example.
And the tree itself is commonly found in coastal areas of Queensland and New South Wales.
The benefits of harnessing fast-growing trees, observes Mr Tuskan, is that they provide perennial ‘fruit’ if you like, and his vision is that the renewable resource wouldn’t compete with food stocks and could be more sustainably harvested.
The other wonder tree that Mr Tuskan is researching is the poplar, a tall, thin, deciduous plant. But rather than being simply an ornamental tree, we could see huge plantations of poplars, each genetically tweaked to deliver different materials, from plastics for car interiors to carbon-fibre for vehicle body panels.
Around one third of a tree’s weight is comprised of a fibrous polymer called lignin, and it’s this material which could see carbon-fibre used in the Toyota Corolla, not just the Bugatti Veyron.
“We can melt it and spin it into carbon fibres,” Mr Tuskan said of the lignin from poplars, which would make it exponentially more affordable.
“For a car, the tree could be deconstructed then reconstructed into the body, frame, interior, and things like that,” he said.
“Depending on what your customer wants, you might vary or modify the molecular weight of the lignin.
“Chemical engineers and polymer scientists would work with geneticists and plant breeders to target the right combination of genes.”
With carbon emissions across all industries expected to tighten in the coming decades, the idea of tree farms providing energy and construction resources will be an increasingly attractive one. All of these ideas would be completely carbon neutral, another reason why the US Department of Energy is investing in the research, and would also provide it with energy independence.
