Innovation Spring 2025

Biofuels meeting energy and waste-reduction needs

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W hen employees at the City of Surrey or Fortis BC fire up a utility vehicle, they are helping divert waste from landfills. It’s all part of the circularity approach of processing organic waste at Surrey’s Biofuel Facility. The facility, operated by Convertus Group, uses organic waste, which would otherwise head to the landfill, to create biofuel and compost. The biofuel is produced as renewable natural gas (RNG) to power vehicles, warm homes, and heat ovens. The compost is further processed and returned to farmers for use on their crops. And the heat is used on-site and by neighbouring facilities. From field to fuel, biofuels using organic waste create an opportunity for communities to manage waste, reduce their carbon footprints, and produce energy, ultimately creating “closed-loop” local economies.

Biofuels are solar energy trapped into organic material, and then you can use that organic material to release the bioenergy. Dr. Zafar Adeel, P.Eng., School of Sustainable Energy Engineering, SFU

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Primary and secondary biofuels Broadly speaking, biofuels are “any organic matter that can be used to generate energy,” explained Dr. Zafar Adeel, P. Eng. Adeel, director pro tem of the School of Sustainable Energy Engineering at the Surrey campus of Simon Fraser University, has a long career in environmental engineering and policy focused on the water-food-energy nexus. Biofuels were among the first energy sources used by humans. When our genetic ancestors discovered fire, they also found the first biofuel: wood. Burning wood releases its stored bioenergy in the form of heat and light. “Where the organic content got the energy from in the first place was, in 99 percent of the cases, through photosynthesis,” Adeel said. “So, biofuels are solar energy trapped into organic material, and then you can use that organic material to release the bioenergy.” There are two broad categories of biofuels. Primary biofuels are those that are directly consumed with little to no additional treatment, such as burning wood or wood pellets. Secondary biofuels leverage microorganisms to convert organic matter into high density biofuels, as happens when processing corn into bioethanol via microbes. “The secondary fuels are where most of the engineering interest is,” Adeel noted. Secondary biofuels have gone through different evolutions since their popularization in the mid-20th century. Early versions of secondary biofuel production systems in Brazil involved taking starches, like sugar cane juice, and giving it to bugs that would digest and

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Spring 2025

Innovation