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Carlton Wood, Senior Lecturer in the Department of Life Sciences, and Module Team Chair of Plants and people (S173), outlines the possibilities and potential of using biofuels to solve our future energy requirements...

About biofuels
“A biofuel is a source of energy that is derived from material that was once living. This sounds simple enough, but there are so many ways of generating biofuels that things quickly get complicated.

“In its simplest form, burning wood on a fire for warmth is using a biofuel. The wood was once alive and part of a living tree and it became ‘energyrich’ through the process of photosynthesis. This, as many of us know, is where the plant uses the energy from sunlight to allow it to take carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and convert it into sugars, and ultimately into all the carbon containing structures within the tree. These structures contain energy that has been converted from the sunlight.

“Burning the wood allows this ‘trapped energy’ to be liberated as heat and also light. Indeed, any plant material that can be burnt can be used in a similar way. “You may not be aware that some of the electricity you use is produced by burning biomass. The largest power station in the UK, Drax in North Yorkshire, produces around seven per cent of the UK’s electricity and burns around 300,000 tonnes of biomass a year. It is looking to increase the amount of biofuel it uses to around 1.5 million tonnes, at the expense of the fossil fuel coal that it normally uses.

Advantages of biofuel over fossil fuel
“There are advantages to using biofuels compared with fossil fuels such as coal that are derived from plants that were alive millions of years ago. To produce a fossil fuel, plants died, became buried and subsequently compressed and ultimately produced fossil fuels such as coal and oil, which are energy-rich in the same way as living plant material is.

“Burning fossil fuels, however, releases both the energy and the carbon dioxide which was trapped millions of years before. The energy is useful, but the carbon dioxide is widely accepted to be a cause of global warming. “Burning a biofuel, however, releases carbon dioxide that was trapped only a few years prior. It is therefore classed as ‘carbon neutral’ and won’t cause an increase in global warming. “We have already seen that wood can be used as biofuel but there is a lot of interest in using certain types of grasses such as Miscanthus which can grow rapidly, using minimal inputs of fertiliser, and can be grown on land that is not used for growing agricultural crops.

These last two points are important, as producing fertiliser requires energy and so it is nonsensical to use energy-requiring fertiliser to produce something that is going to be used as an energy source. Also, using land for growing biofuel that could be used for producing agricultural crops is hard to justify in a time of increasing food shortage.

“Indeed, the increases in the global cost of wheat in 2008/09 were partly caused by poor worldwide harvests, but also by the USA using around 25 per cent of its harvest to produce biofuel for transport purposes.

Using other fuels
“The transport fuels petrol and diesel can both be substituted by liquid biofuels. Both the sugars and starches that are found in plants’ stems and seeds can be fermented to produce alcohol such as ethanol. This is what happens when beer is produced – barley seeds rich in starch have the starch converted to sugar and then yeasts break the sugar down to produce ethanol. In the case of beer, we drink the ethanol but it can be used to produce bioethanol and used as a replacement for petrol. “Biodiesel is produced in a slightly different way: the oils found in many seeds and nuts of plants such as sunflowers, oil seed rape or palm oil can be “The problem with using seeds and nuts as a biofuel is that you are using a potential food source for fuel purposes”

The problem with using seeds and nuts is that you are using a potential food source for fuel purposes. Additionally, growing huge areas of plants such as palm oil, some of which is used for biofuel, has caused large tracts of biodiverse rainforest habitat
to be cut down, threatening such species as the orangutan.

“Scientists have found solutions to such problems. Some transport biofuels such as the biodiesel produced from the fruit of the Jatropha tree do not have such disadvantages. Jatropha fruit is inedible and, also importantly, the tree can tolerate drought conditions and grow on land unsuitable for agricultural crops. One example where Jatropha has been used successfully is in India where the diesel train that runs from Delhi to Mumbai uses 15 per cent biodiesel derived from Jatropha. “Biofuels, though, are not a full answer to our energy needs.

Many experts believe that biofuels have an increasing and significant role to play in the generation of our fuels, but in the UK particularly there is extensive pressure on our land resource from population growth and the requirements for both housing and for food production. Biofuels are part of the answer, alongside other renewable sources of energy such as wind and solar power.

“In some countries with greater land reserves than the UK, biofuels could be even more useful. In Brazil, for instance, 40 per cent of cars run on bioethanol and there are plans to increase this percentage. “The overall answer to our fuel issues is to use less fuel in the first instance, to decrease our reliance on fossil fuels, increase our reliance on biofuels and to work for a solution that requires global initiatives to maximise the use of non-agricultural land for producing biofuel crops.”
 

Find out more:

• S173 Plants and people
• Photo by: Matt Murf

Every astronomer's dream came true for Open University astronomy student Stefan Holmes, when a rare and dramatic star explosion happened on the night he was observing the skies.

Stefan, a PhD student, captured an image of the 'Type 1a'  supernova as it appeared only four hours after the explosion, using the Open University's robotic astronomical telescope, PIRATE. 

The supernova,  which occurred 20 million light-years away in the spiral galaxy M101, (see PIRATE image below) was the closest  explosion of its type observed for decades, and the first to be available for detailed investigations with modern-day astronomical detectors.

 The image of the supernova's early stages, captured by PIRATE at 9pm BST on 23 August 2011, has helped an international team of scientists determine that the exploding star was a 'white dwarf – a star at the end stage of its life.  

“This is a great advancement," said Dr Ulrich Kolb, OU Senior Lecturer and Director of the PIRATE facility."The spectral appearance of type Ia supernovae have long suggested exploding white dwarfs as the culprits responsible for the explosion, but this new research is effectively proof of their white dwarf nature.

“It demonstrates the capabilities of small- to medium-aperture telescopes to contribute to world-leading research.”

Stefan, who is among the team conducting the PIRATE research programme, said: “It was great to have been able to capture this image and be part of such an exciting outcome. It was a case of being at the right place at the right time."

The international team's finding is the subject of an article in the January 10 issue of the Astrophysical Journal Letters series (2012, ApJ, Issue 744, L17) and has been presented this week at the meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Austin, Texas.

For more information see OU news release. 

Related stories

• New remote telescope gives astronomers more viewing time

Dr Basiro Davey from the Open University's Faculty of Science has been made an MBE in the New Year's Honours list for services to health and higher education.

Basiro joined the OU in 1976 after completing a Doctorate in Tumour Immunology. She pioneered the development of the Health Sciences curriculum at the OU, including the multidisciplinary U205 Health and disease, S320 Infectious disease and most recently, SDK125 Introducing health sciences.

She was Health Sciences Awards Director for several years until 2009, leading the development of the OU’s undergraduate and postgraduate modules and awards in this interdisciplinary area.

In her long OU career she has produced hundreds of multi-media educational materials for distance-learning modules in many areas of public health, including immunology, epidemiology, communicable diseases, sexually transmitted infections and cancers.

Basiro is an expert in distance learning pedagogy, recognised by an OU Teaching Award in 2010. From 2009 to 2011, she was seconded to the OU’s Health Education and Training (HEAT) programme for Africa, as its Deputy Director (Ethiopia), developing training materials and leading intensive curriculum design and writing workshops with 57 Ethiopian health experts and around a dozen OU colleagues.

Together they produced 13 HEAT modules, which are already being studied by over 1,000 of Ethiopia’s rural Health Extension Workers, on key areas of health promotion and disease prevention, including antenatal care, labour and delivery, environmental health, family planning, nutrition, immunization, communicable and non-communicable diseases and mental health. In 2012 another 5,000 Ethiopian students will study these modules, with further cohorts of 3,000 expected annually thereafter.

Find out more:
Dr Basiro Davey
 

A self-study course aimed at improving the care of patients with inflammatory arthritis is being launched by The Open University in February 2012.

Inflammatory Arthritis – a multidisciplinary approach has been funded by a curriculum development grant from the pharmaceutical company Pfizer, and has been developed with the direction and advice of specialist rheumatology nurses. 

The course aims to provide healthcare professionals with specialist knowledge to improve services for patients with inflammatory arthritis, and is also relevant to patients and carers who want to have a deeper understanding of their condition and its treatments. 

It aims to support a person-centred and multidisciplinary approach to caring for people with this long-term condition.

It will give students knowledge of how to identify and monitor inflammatory arthritis using history, disease scores and blood tests, and ensures they are aware of the standards and guidelines that govern the care of patients with the condition.

The course is aimed at a wide range of health and social care professionals including nurses, physiotherapists, occupational therapists, health assistants, community pharmacists, GPs, junior doctors, radiologists, podiatrists, social workers and alternative therapy practitioners.

It is delivered online over a period of up to 18 months, with flexible modules that amount to 50 hours of learning.

 

 

 

An OU in Scotland academic and advisor for the BBC science series Bang Goes The Theory is to appear on a TV quiz show with other celebrity scientists.

Dr Ian Johnston,  a lecturer in engineering and staff tutor in technology with The Open University in Scotland, has been involved with several television science programmes over the years including Bang Goes The Theory and Electric Dreams, as well as being  an academic consultant to Battle of the Greeks (appearing on screen with Richard Hammond).

He was among a panel of five media scientists for the Celebrity Eggheads quiz including Johnny Ball (Think of a Number), Adam Hart-Davis, (What the Romans did for Us), Kate Bellingham (Tomorrow's World) and Monty Jopson (The One Show).  The programme is the finale of the series and is due to be shown on BBC2 at 6pm on Friday 23 December.

Dr Johnston said: “It was great fun appearing on Celebrity Eggheads, particularly because it gave me a chance to meet and work with Johnny Ball. I wasn't the only one keen to meet him - he has cult status amongst generations of scientists, engineers and mathematicians who trace their interests back to the shows he made from the 60s to the 80s.”

“As for what area I got and how we did overall ... my lips are sealed. Watch the programme and all will be revealed,” he said.

What is a microbe and what have they ever done for us? From Black Death to Cholera, and Syphilis to Typhoid, microbes have been responsible for some of the world’s most devastating diseases. But they have also provided the human race with the technological advances of genetic engineering and nitrogen fixation, the vision of life on Mars, the life-saving properties of antibiotics and food preservation, along with the wonderful taste of beer.

Using expert commentary, animation and stylised visuals, these Seven Wonders of the Microbe World videos provide an engaging introduction to microbiology, by examining the impact microbes have had on humans through a historical perspective, from Egyptian times to the present day.

Find out more

• Seven Wonders of the Microbe World on iTunes
• Seven Wonders of the Microbe World - playlist on YouTube
• OpenLearn