Biofuel News

Ethanol is taking a bite out of crude oil, this according to a recent OPEC report. An article published in The National, says that rising ethanol use in the United States is dampening demand for petroleum based fuels and this will be felt even more during the next few months.

Next week, OPEC ministers are getting ready to meet in Vienna, and last month OPEC participated in a preliminary report that estimates that $500 billion a year could be spent yer year on fossil-fuel based subsidies. In its latest monthly oil market report issued two days ago, the organization's secretariat drew attention to an eight-fold increase in U.S. ethanol consumption since 2000. This use should grow as the E15 waiver, which allows consumers the choice to use up to 15 percent ethanol in conventional cars is expected to pass by late summer.

“With the continued rise in US [petrol] stocks and surging ethanol volumes in the [petrol] pool, as well as ample idle refinery capacity, any seasonal upwards movement in the [petrol] market is likely to be limited,” the OPEC report said as quoted by The National.

OPEC also noted in its report that its projected demand for crude oil continues to be less than production leading to an oversupply situation that amounts to around 1.5 million barrels per day (bpd). Typically, stocks begin to dwindle after the first of the year but this year, stocks actually increased. Regardless of the current surplus, OPEC raised its prediction of global oil demand by 100,000 bpd from last month's report. On Wednesday, a barrel of oil sold just shy of $80.

Each day, cellulosic gets closer to becoming commercially viable in the marketplace. Two weeks ago, a major hurdle was overcome with the announcement that Novozymes' enzyme Cellic® CTec2, used for cellulosic ethanol production with feedstocks such as corn stover and corn cobs, is now 50 cents per gallon. I had the opportunity to learn more about this breakthrough when I sat down with Thomas Videbaek, Executive President of Novozymes BioBusiness, at Commodity Classic.

Videbaek explained that Cellic is the first commercial product for cellulosic ethanol. With Cellic, you'll be able to produce cellulosic ethanol using an enzyme cost of about 50 cents per gallon. “With this, we think that the enzyme part of producing cellulosic ethanol has been cracked,” said Videbaek. “Now we need to get out and starting producing it and we're really, really excited about that.”

Novozymes is a partner with POET's Project Liberty which will produce ethanol from corn cobs. I asked Videbaek for an update and he believes that with the enzyme breakthrough they will be able to produce cellulosic ethanol for around $2.35 per gallon. However, the expectation is that once Project Liberty is up and running, the cost will be reduced to around $1.90 per gallon. This will be monumental in that it will break the $2.00 per gallon barrier challenge of producing cellulosic ethanol.

This was a massive project for Novozymes who has been working on it for more than five years. “It's the biggest project we've ever carried out,” said Videbaek. There were more than 150 people working on it in the past year alone.

In addition to corn stover and cobs as a feedstock, they are also working with wheat in Europe and have an operational pilot plant in Denmark. In addition, they are working with Brazilian ethanol producers to develop an enzyme to break down the bagasse.

You can learn more about Cellic by listening to my full interview with Thomas below.

“Some people believe that corn ethanol is an old technology. We believe just the opposite,” said John Caupert, the Director for the National Corn-to-Ethanol Research Center (NCERC) during an interview with me at Commodity Classic. “We feel the corn ethanol industry is still in its infancy and through technological advancements, there's much more to learn and prove in corn ethanol production.”

In the last two-to-three years, Caupert noted that there has been a major emphasis on technological improvements such as corn fractionation, and aneorbic digestion, things that would incorporate capital upgrades or capital investments in the ethanol plant. In terms of corn ethanol production, a lot of focus has been dedicated to advancements in fermentation ingredients such as enzymes and various strains of yeast.

The NCERC has also played a role in the debate over indirect land use. Caupert explained that they have done a lot of research that focuses on the value of how co-products improve the greenhouse gas footprint of fuel ethanol production.

“I think more often than not, we forget about the fact a corn ethanol plant in addition to producing fuel ethanol, also produces this high value livestock feed called distillers grains,” said Caupert.

They will continue to look at this data and make recommendation about how the co-products should add value to corn ethanol in the indirect land use arena.

Listen below to hear my entire interview with John.

Growth Energy's Market Development team is now offering funding to retailers to assist in ethanol blender pump infrastructure. Grants of $2,500 and $5,000 are now available on a first come, first serve basis to vendors who wish to install new or convert existing equipment for ethanol fueling. These grants are in addition to any Federal or state grants or incentives a retailer may be eligible.

“There are over 8 million flexible fuel vehicles across the country with more being produced in each model year. Unfortunately, of the 161,000 gasoline stations in the U.S. only 2,200 offer E85 where FFVs may fuel up with a high level blend of domestic, renewable fuel such at 85% ethanol……….another 132 offer mid-level blends,” said Growth Energy Market Development VP, Phil Lampert. “Growth Energy is pleased to offer this assistance to retailers across the nation and we hope that they avail themselves of this unique opportunity.”

Growth Energy can also offer pump imaging and technical assistance along with the grants. You can find the two page outline of the Infrastructure Development Program by clicking here. To apply for the funding, click here.

The world's largest ethanol producer plans to decrease water use in the production of ethanol by 22 percent over the next five years, which would result in a savings of one billion gallons of water per year.

In a presentation to employees today, POET CEO Jeff Broin said the company is committed to producing ethanol as sustainably as possible and minimizing its impact on natural resources.

Water reduction is the first goal of Ingreenuity, POET’s new initiative to improve the environmental performance of ethanol. The reductions will come primarily through installing a proprietary process developed by POET engineers that recycles cooling water rather than discharging it. The process has recently been installed in three POET Biorefining locations which now average 2 to 2.5 gallons of water per gallon of ethanol.

To kick off the initiative, Broin announced that the POET Foundation has committed more than $420,000 to the non-profit Global Health Ministries (GHM) over the same five-year period as POET’s water reduction goal. A portion of the funds will help GHM repair, construct and maintain 90 wells in Nigeria that that will give more than 300,000 people access to pure water.

Filed under: Biodiesel, Diesel, Chevrolet, GM, GMC

2011 GMC Sierra HD features unique diesel exhaust fluid refill reminders originally appeared on Autoblog Green on Thu, 11 Mar 2010 08:59:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Would you believe a car powered by coffee grounds?

Forget the electric vehicle revolution--this car is juiced up by the same stuff that powers you in the morning. The "Carpuccino" car was built by a team from the BBC science show Bang Goes The Theory to prove the viability of cars powered by fuels other than conventional gasoline and diesel. The car, built from a converted 1988 Volkswagen Scirocco, was used by the show because it looks like the DeLorean from Back to the Future.

Interesting story of a car that runs on coffee, not very practical, but a great reminder that almost any fuel can be harnessed for the use of transportation. Makes biodiesel seem simple, this is a contraption. 

An experiment: can you grow jatropha in space? Biodiesel reaches for the sky

Fruits of J. curcas. Fruits are produced terminally in the branches, and each fruit contains three seeds. Image credit: Dr. Wagner A Vendrame, University of Florida at Homestead

What if space held the key to producing alternative energy crops on Earth? That's what researchers are hoping to find in a new experiment on the International Space Station.

The experiment, National Lab Pathfinder-Cells 3, is aimed at learning whether microgravity can help jatropha curcas plant cells grow faster to produce biofuel, or renewable fuel derived from biological matter. Jatropha is known to produce high quality oil that can be converted into an alternative energy fuel, or biofuel.

By studying the effects of microgravity on jatropha cells, researchers hope to accelerate the cultivation of the plant for commercial use by improving characteristics such as cell structure, growth and development. This is the first study to assess the effects of microgravity on cells of a biofuel plant.

$1-a-gallon biodiesel tax incentive clears Senate as part of jobs bill, on to the House

As expected, the federal $1-a-gallon biodiesel tax incentive has cleared the U.S. Senate on the back of the current jobs bill.

The 62-36 vote now moves the measure into a reconciliation phase with the House’s version of the bill.

I caught up with Michael Frohlich, the director of federal communications for the National Biodiesel Board’s office in Washington, D.C. earlier this evening. He says final passage of this important measure can’t come soon enough.

“It’s an immediate need for the industry at this point,” says Frohlich, pointing out that biodiesel has been without the credit since the beginning of the year. Fortunately, if the bill does pass and is signed into law, it will be retroactive back to January 1, 2010.

It looks like a sure thing at this point, the politics of biodiesel wins the moment, but if this young industry has to go through this much trauma each year, there will be big losses. Let’s at least get a five year plan for biodiesel in America.

3 months after explosion, Imperium restarts Grays Harbor biodiesel plant

The Imperium Grays Harbor biodiesel refinery has resumed production. Photograph: Imperium Renewables

Imperium’s refinery in Grays Harbor, Washington, suffered damage on 2 December when a 10,000-gallon, heated glycerine tank ruptured due to over-pressurization, damaging nearby pipes and storage tanks.

On Tuesday, the plant received its first shipment of vegetable oil and has restored biodiesel production. While the market is improving, the huge plant will operate at less than full capacity for the time being.

Imperium founder and chief executive John Plaza states: “We are thrilled to be producing again. We have replaced the damaged equipment and re-designed the glycerin neutralization system to ensure such a rupture won’t happen again.”

Glycerine, a dark liquid, is a co-product of biodiesel production.

In addition to the plant repairs, the biodiesel market appears to be on the mend.

The CEO of one of the world's biggest petroleum companies says his company will soon produce more natural gas than oil and is investing more than ever in biofuels.

And this article from the Wall Street Journal says that Peter Voser of Royal Dutch Shell says he expects in the next 40 years, 40 percent of the world's cars will be electric:

Mr. Voser sat down with The Wall Street Journal's Alan Murray and Kimberley Strassel to talk about the future of climate-change legislation, the company's push beyond oil, the prospects for electric vehicles and more…

MR. VOSER: We are focusing a lot on biofuels at this stage. We just announced a few weeks ago a big joint venture in Brazil where we are bringing our first- and second-generation biofuels technologies together with Cosan, a sugar ethanol producer there, in order to speed up the second-generation capabilities because we need to speed up that process. So biofuels is one.

We are in wind. We have gone out of solar. We tried both silicon and thin-film solar, but we can't see that as being something that we can scale up globally and get the economies of scale. So we leave that. It's a technology that will be developed, no doubt, but we leave that to a smaller, medium-sized players.

Voser goes on to tell the WSJ that by 2012, Shell will have more natural gas production than oil.

They're back up and running at Imperium Renewables' Grays Harbor, Washington biodiesel plant.

This company press release says Imperium re-opened the facility after a glycerin tank rupture idled operations last December:

“We are thrilled to be producing again,” said John Plaza, founder and CEO of Imperium Renewables. “We have replaced the damaged equipment and re-designed the glycerin neutralization system to ensure such a rupture won't happen again.”

The first of more than 40 rail cars containing millions of gallons of vegetable oil from canola grown in the Northwest arrived yesterday at the Imperium Grays Harbor facility. Imperium will convert the oil into biodiesel, which has been shown to reduce carbon emissions by 78 percent compared to petroleum fuel. The fuel will be distributed and consumed within the Pacific Northwest as well, embodying the preferred approach recently recommended by President Obama's Biofuels Interagency Working Group.

The re-opening comes just in time as nearby British Columbia had a new biodiesel mandate go into effect at the beginning of this year, while in the U.S., biodiesel prospects have brightened in the wake of the U.S. Senate's passage of the $1-a-gallon federal tax incentive and the EPA's issuance of the new Renewable Fuel Standard, better known as RFS-2, which mandates the consumption of 1.15 billion gallons of biodiesel nationally in this year.

As expected, the federal $1-a-gallon biodiesel tax incentive has cleared the U.S. Senate on the back of the current jobs bill.

The 62-36 vote now moves the measure into a reconciliation phase with the House's version of the bill.

I caught up with Michael Frohlich, the director of federal communications for the National Biodiesel Board's office in Washington, D.C. earlier this evening. He says final passage of this important measure can't come soon enough.

“It's an immediate need for the industry at this point,” says Frohlich, pointing out that biodiesel has been without the credit since the beginning of the year. Fortunately, if the bill does pass and is signed into law, it will be retroactive back to January 1, 2010.

But Frohlich is worried that the biodiesel will be back in the same boat next December 31st as it was last December 31st, because this version of the tax credit expires at the end of this year.

“Although it's slightly a bit of a hollow victory in the sense that we'll have to go back to the drawing table once this gets enacted to make sure that it continues to get enacted again next year, it is traditional that [Congress does] pass these extenders, and we haven't seen any objection from any senator or House member.”

He says last year, the Senate got so caught up in the health care debate, lawmakers worked on Christmas Eve … and that never happens … and the incentive got left by the wayside. Frohlich doesn't expect that the biodiesel credit will get left behind again, but it has reinforced that the NBB's number one legislative priority is to get a multi-year tax credit into effect.

And hopefully, there won't be a health care debate at stops all business.

You can hear all of my conversation with Michael below.

It may be a little late in the day for this reminder but you can still go online to register for a spot in the upcoming Process Optimization Seminar being hosted by Phibro Ethanol Performance Group, along with Fremont, Fermentis and Novozymes.

The Seminar is targeted to plant managers, operations managers, technical managers, lab managers and general managers. This interactive seminar is focused on helping ethanol plants increase their efficiency and profitability through learning about new technologies available for the fermentation process. This two half-day seminar is being held in Indianapolis, Indiana on March 30-31 and the early registration deadline is March 10 (uh, that's today!).

Click here to get registered.

Domestic Fuel is happy to be the media partner for this event.

Growing biomass in space? That’s right. Right now an experiment is underway on the space station to see if microgravity can affect the growth of Jatropha curcas, a tropical flowering plant.

According to Popular Science ,

“This first-ever experiment to test a possible biofuel in microgravity aims to improve cell structure, growth and development in the Jatropha curcas plants. An identical set of samples that represent the experimental control are located at the University of Florida's Tropical Research and Education Center in Homestead.

Crops grown in space have already been used to produce space beer, courtesy of the Sapporo brewery company. But the possibility of improving biofuel stock courtesy of a space ride might have far greater implications for the world, assuming that the crops do respond well to microgravity.”

What does this mean for the future? Space farms aren’t right around the corner. Popular Science concludes,

“Sadly, we won't see any space farms really get going until launch costs go way down. Perhaps the new era of commercial spaceflight might also help usher in that future vision.”

Grand Rapids, Michigan adds 7 new biodiesel VWs to Metro Cab fleet

Emily Zoladz | The Grand Rapids Press  Rev. Ronald Nyudam, of Grand Rapids, right, gets into one of Metro Cab's new bio-diesel fueled VW Jettas as Metro driver Bryan Kenez, of Kentwood, left, prepares to take off Monday at the Gerald R. Ford International Airport. According to VP of Operations Steve Walz, Metro Cab now has seven of these green cars in service, which get 42 miles to the gallon using bio-diesel fuel.

GRAND RAPIDS -- Metro Cab driver Bryan Kenez is making fewer stops at the gas pump lately.

Kenez recently switched to a bio-diesel-fueled Volkswagen Jetta cab, a shade greener than the traditional minivan he used to drive. His taxi now motors more than 500 miles on one tank of gas -- that's about 35-40 miles a gallon -- which gives him twice the gas mileage.

The Grand Rapids-based cab firm has added seven of the cars to its fleet in the past two weeks.

Metro Cab felt the investment would be appreciated in Grand Rapids, which is gaining a national reputation as a green city, said Steve Walz, vice-president of operations at Metro Cab, 4678 Danvers Drive SE.

I was in San Francisco last week and I saw one cab company using the Prius as cabs. Why shouldn’t a cab run on biodiesel—it might open the eyes of many people who never gave biodiesel a chance.

Chicago's Mother McAuley High School builds biodiesel processor for Haiti

Photo from: http://biodieselprocessor.org/Appleseed_Biodiesel_Processors.htm

Last year, students at Chicago's Mother McAuley High School began building a biodiesel processor for a school in Pichon, Haiti.

When a devastating earthquake rocked Haiti on Jan. 12, the McAuley students found an even more important reason to complete their work. Roz Iasillo, who heads up the school's science department, says the disaster pushed back the ship date for the processor, but the work took on a new sense of meaning.

Most Americans probably think of soybeans when they hear biodiesel. However, the Iasillo explains the McAuley processor will use jatropha to produce fuel.

Jatropha, which grows wild and abundantly in Haiti, is a sort of shrub. Iasillo says residents will be able to harvest the seeds and use a hand-crank crushing device to extract the oil.

Once the oil is extracted, it is placed in the processor. Using solar panels for power, the processor cooks the oil. Here, the oil breaks down into biodiesel and glycerin. Iasillo says the glycerin can be used for a variety of products, including soap.

The biodiesel that results from the processing is 96% pure, which is plenty good for running an engine. However, Iasillo says it makes more sense to use it for cooking and lighting lanterns. "There's no reason to put it in a generator to create electricity," she notes. "There is no infrastructure for electricity."

With this processor, residents should be able to manufacture up to 40 gallons of biodiesel every three days.

Florida: 4 high school students push Senate committee to alter biodiesel law

Photo from: http://www.life.com/image/57576310

TALLAHASSEE -- Four Oak Hall High School science students received a lesson in government Tuesday when they persuaded a Senate committee to approve a measure designed to cut government red tape.

The students developed a process to take used cooking grease and vegetable oil and convert it into biodiesel, but then ran up against government regulations..

The Senate Higher Education Committee approved a measure by Sen. Steve Oelrich that would exempt secondary schools that produce less that 1,000 gallons of biodiesel a year from paying taxes. The measure also exempts them from registration requirements.

An identical bill is in the House.

I can’t believe the state wanted to tax a school for making a small amount of biodiesel, but that is what governments do, they make red tape. Thank goodness this is being looked at now.

How BioFuelBox converts wastewater FOG into biodiesel fuel

Figure 1: BioFuelBox bio-refinery used to convert wastewater FOG into biodiesel. BioFuelBox is owner-operator of this small-sized facility with a 1 million gallons per year capacity.

Over 4 billion gallons of waste grease per year is generated in the United States, presenting costly challenges to wastewater treatment systems. Local governments spend over $25 billion annually maintaining sewer systems, necessitating more effective strategies to contain the financial and environmental impacts caused by sanitary sewer overflows (SSO) and combined sewer overflows (CSO). In addition, many States are placing stricter requirements on industries to resolve issues with waste fats, oils and greases (FOG) before wastewater enters the sewer system, adding logistical and technological challenges to those faced by waste generators.

We have heard about this company in the past, seems a perfect answer for helping to unclog our municipal sewers, and yet make a fuel that can be used for so many purposes. Good ideas here.

A group of engineers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison has been able to turn biomass into the chemical equivalent of jet fuel, and they've been able to do it using a process that actually takes advantage of biomass sugars' bad habit of degrading.

This press release from the school says a simple process developed by James Dumesic, Steenbock Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering at UW-Madison, postdoctoral researchers Jesse Bond and David Martin Alonso, and graduate students Dong Wang and Ryan West preserves about 95 percent of the energy from the original biomass, requires little hydrogen input, and captures carbon dioxide under high pressure for future use:

Much of the Dumesic group's previous research of using cellulosic biomass for biofuels has focused on processes that convert abundant plant-based sugars into transportation fuels. However, in previously studied conversion methods, sugar molecules frequently degrade to form levulinic acid and formic acid — two products the previous methods couldn't readily transform into high-energy liquid fuels.

In the presence of metal catalysts, the two acids react to form gamma-valerolactone, or GVL, which now is manufactured in small quantities as an herbal food and perfume additive. Using laboratory-scale equipment and stable, inexpensive catalysts, Dumesic's group converts aqueous solutions of GVL into jet fuel. “It really is very simple,” says Bond, of the two-step catalytic process. “We can pull off these two catalytic stages, as well as the requisite separation steps, in series, with basic equipment. With very minimal processing, we can produce a pure stream of jet-fuel-range alkenes and a fairly pure stream of carbon dioxide.”

The researchers say the fuel produced is high-energy density, making it better suited for the aviation industry than more conventional ethanol. Now, the team is working on making the process cost-effective.