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Date Published:
21 April 2009

Volume 3, Issue 3


Positive outlook for EU ethanol

Feature
Last year was a far from normal for the European bioethanol fuel sector. It was a year characterised by record prices for raw materials, record prices for DDGS, an all-time high price for crude oil and a record year in terms of ethanol imports. It was also the year that the biofuels industry was confronted with strong, often very negative illfounded, political views. In short it is a year that... [read more]

Continued controversy

Feature
The US trade body the National Biodiesel Board (NBB) has submitted some official comments in relation to the EU Commission’s decision on anti-dumping (AD) and countervailing duties (CVD). From 13 March companies using B99 will pay between $260 (€198) and $410 per tonne. This level of duty will remain in place for six months when the member states will have to vote on a proposed definitive level... [read more]

Future shock: new paradigm in algal biofuels

Feature
In 1973 the world experienced the first major supply shock from OPEC, leading to petrol shortages, and a sustained period of economic stagnation, and rampant inflation. As a response, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) established the Aquatic Species Programme (ASP), where algae was studied in depth as a source for biodiesel for nearly two decades. By the late 1990s, the ill effects... [read more]

Supply outstrips demand in Malawi

Feature
Ethanol Company (ETHCO) in Malawi is one of southern Africa’s most experienced ethanol producers, but is struggling to get optimum use out of its plant. Commissioned in 1982, the plant was originally designed to make use of cane molasses from a local sugar mill. It has now produced well over a quarter of a billion litres of ethanol. The distillery has a design capacity of 60,000 litres of alcohol... [read more]

Reducing import costs through biofuels

Feature
Suffi cient bioenergy in southern Africa, which mostly depends on petroleum products from the Middle East and southeast Asian countries, is expected to drastically reduce fuel import costs by almost 25% and the energy capacity for individual countries by almost the same margin. At the moment only three southern African states, Namibia, Zambia and Malawi, have ongoing programmes on bioenergy and... [read more]

Outlook for southern Africa

Feature
South Africa’s biofuels mood could hardly be more muted as the country’s elections approach. Maize is still excluded from the government’s biofuels strategy and only a handful of projects still proceeding. At a biofuels conference in Midrand in early April, a government in absentia got short shrift from the sector, with characteristically harsh words from representatives of the Southern African... [read more]

No appetite for renewable risk

Feature
Many of the investors who showed initial exuberance in backing the biofuels industries and other clean energy projects have been burned. They were with companies like Aventine Renewable Energy, of Pekin, Illinois, which conducted an initial public offering (IPO) in summer of 2007, lost half its money in a matter of months and is now seeking bankruptcy protection. ‘Ethanol has tainted the market... [read more]

Jatropha – the future or disaster in the making?

Feature
A perfect biofuel crop would grow where food crops cannot, need no irrigation, no fertiliser and little care. It would grow fast, converting almost all the solar energy it soaks up into biomass and would be easy to process into high class fuel. Some say jatropha fits this bill, but it also comes with its own set of challenges. What is jatropha? Monique Simmonds of the world famous Royal Botanic... [read more]

Sustainable production of jatropha

Feature
While jatropha certainly has potential as an oil crop, most of the interest to date has been driven by the short term commercial need to establish plantations, capture market share and begin developing IP through plant breeding programmes. For the time being at least investors are focusing on the European biodiesel market, which will be fully established by 2010. However, questions that are often... [read more]

Enzymes to ethanol

Feature
Straw, along with the many varieties of tall grasses that grow naturally in Africa and Asia; sugarcane bagasse, corn stover, and hard wood chips from trees such as willow and poplar, can all be used as feedstocks to produce second generation bioethanol. The useful part of these feedstock plants is the cellulose, which is to be found on the plant cell walls acting as a stiffener to keep the plant... [read more]

From unwanted fats to valuable fuel

Feature
It is well-documented in technical literature that enzymatic processing of oils and fats into biodiesel is technically feasible, but still very few plants use this technology for commercial-scale production. This is mainly due to the lack of an optimised process design coupled with the lack of cost-effective enzymes. However, recent data documenting the productivity of enzymatic biodiesel... [read more]

The US stays positive

Feature
Demand for biodiesel in the US remains constrained, with the annual production pace currently gauged somewhere within 200 to 300 million gallons – a fraction of installed capacity. The export market in the US virtually dried up after the EU put into effect tariffs punishing US producers for previously exploiting a loophole in US law that allowed for double dipping on tax subsidies – first in the... [read more]

Consumption to rise this year

Feature
The world economic and financial crisis is having a huge impact on economic activity, and especially on transport. The consumption of diesel, the preferred fuel for trucks in the EU, decreased during the first few months of 2009. In France, for example, fuel delivery statistics showed a 6% decrease in diesel delivery in January 2009 compared to January 2008, and a 10% decrease compared to... [read more]

Saving money from the outset

Feature
Some biofuels plants have sunk in the global economic downturn, projects have been cancelled and assets have been sold off. Instead of simply being beaten by expensive feedstocks set against the cheaper cost of oil, producers are working with plant designers to reduce costs through energy efficient equipment and processes. A steamy solution One way of reducing a plant’s energy consumption is by... [read more]