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Date Published:
07 October 2012

Volume 6, Issue 8


France heads a biofuels EU-turn

Feature
Biofuels production could be potentially capped in the near future in France following a cabinet meeting in September. Agriculture minister Stephane Le Foll mentioned that France should reconsider its plans to further develop the use of biofuel during the meeting as crop prices rise worldwide. Le Foll was quoted as saying that France’s targets for incorporating biofuel elements into... [read more]

FEDIOL reflects on the EU policy rewind

Feature
According to the EU Renewable Energy Directive, the European Commission has to come up with a proposal to address indirect land-use change (ILUC) if deemed appropriate and necessary to establish a concrete methodology. While the services of the European Commission are still deep in discussions, a leaked draft, which was reported in European media, raised serious concerns across the biofuels... [read more]

European biofuel policy will fail to deliver unless â

Feature
A peer-reviewed study released in September by the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT), suggests that the European Commission’s move to cap food-based biofuels is justified by the available science and likely to be effective in maximising carbon benefits of European biofuels policy. The study shows that without modification the existing EU biofuels mandate is likely to fail... [read more]

EPRF report tells ethanol to â

Feature
In mid-September the Energy Policy Research Foundation (EPRF), a lobbying group that studies energy economics with a special emphasis on oil, released a report entitled ‘Ethanol’s Lost Promise’, which concludes that the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) should be abandoned to allow the transportation fuel market to determine demand for oil, ethanol and corn. The report found that... [read more]

Glimmer of hope

Feature
The governors of six states in the US formally petitioned the EPA to waive some or all of the Renewable Fuel Standard for this year and 2013 while two other governors expressed support for an RFS waiver. The EPA, the administrator of the RFS, is accepting public comment through 11 October, and will take another 60 days or so from then to make its ruling. This is the second formal attempt to waive... [read more]

Riding the Blue ethanol wave

Feature
Blue Sugars, previously known as KL Energy, lays claim to a first in the world of cellulosic ethanol technology developers. Earlier this year the company became the first second generation ethanol producer to be awarded with Renewable Identification Numbers (RINs). RIN regulations are overseen and enforced by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as insurance that the prescribed levels of... [read more]

Enemies and the endgame

Feature
Ethanol has made some enemies who are quick to use political muscle to undermine an opponent’s market position. Larry Pope, CEO of Smithfield Foods, Virginia, took to the Wall Street Journal in July to tell the world it was paying more for food because of ethanol. The paper published a piece Pope penned titled: ‘The ethanol mandate is worse than the drought’. ‘The current... [read more]

Completing the recycling circle

Feature
Earlier this year Agri Energy opened the UK’s largest dedicated used cooking oil (UCO) biodiesel plant. From start-up six years ago the company has grown rapidly, offering its 50,000-plus customers across the UK a complete cooking oil service and food waste collections. The biodiesel plant, which opened in May, is able to process 16 million litres of biodiesel a year. It has been especially... [read more]

Biofuels come under fire

Feature
Extracting hydrocarbons from rocks buried deep underground and refining them into products that have underpinned our way of life for the best part of a century is an understandably dangerous business. Too many major accidents have become household names, such has been the scale of fatality and loss: Piper Alpha in the North Sea in 1988 which killed 167 people; the Buncefield oil storage explosion... [read more]

Setting the industry alight

Feature
Despite the rapid growth of the biofuels market, the industry’s experience with fighting storage tank fires, involving ethanol or other water miscible fuels, is very limited. There are a few known ethanol tank fires but these have resulted in burn out rather than extinguishment which indicates that traditional fire fighting methodologies might need to be reconsidered. There have also been... [read more]

Squeezing the grind

Feature
The ethanol construction boom of 2006-7 saw a rush of plants in what was a veritable stampede to the jackpot. Methyl Tertiary Butyl Ether (MTBE) was phased out and petrol makers needed a blend component. Plants multiplied across the landscape, construction crews buzzed through towns like Watertown, South Dakota, Luverne, Minnesota, Burlington and Iowa. ‘Things were done fast and there were... [read more]

Inventing the future of corn oil

Feature
There have been some amazing inventions in recent years. 1953 saw the first transistor radio created, the ‘60s brought us ATM machines and handheld calculators, in the ‘70s the first practical computer, the ‘80s had cellular phones, the ‘90s the World Wide Web and Viagra, also amazing depending upon your age, and this millennium brought us YouTube, Time Magazine’s... [read more]

Investing in the future of biotechnology

Feature
Picking winners is never easy. When considering a new company with no track record, with a new technology in a new industry, investors really need expert advice. San Francisco-based Burrill and Company is almost unique in the world of finance in that it specialises in the ‘life sciences’ field. There are three strands to the company’s business: merchant banking, media and... [read more]

Choosing the right metering pump

Feature
Two processes are used to produce ethanol from grain: dry and wet milling. Dry milling plants generate ethanol, carbon dioxide and distillers’ grain, which is used as a high-protein livestock feed supplement. Wet milling plants create these and additional valuable by-products such as corn syrup, dextrose and fructose, however they cost substantially more to build and operate than a dry... [read more]

Let history be our guide

Feature
Biorefining companies will need to raise between $500 billion (€387 billion) and $1 trillion to develop the projects necessary to increase world consumption from 4% to 18% by 2030. Recently, however, investors have been hesitant to commit funds due to uncertainties usually associated with any nascent industry. What can be done to help finance biorefineries for the production of advanced... [read more]

The slow dance to financial stability

Feature
The biofuels world is littered with the corpses of good companies and decent folk who ran out of time, ran into obstacles or just plain ran out of luck. Sometimes ‘this running’ into is helped along by unscrupulous agents, other times the markets change and what was a dead certainty becomes just plain old dead. Then there are companies that are simply thriving and growing. Finally... [read more]

Analysis in seconds

Feature
A comment often heard at trade shows and conferences is that the blending equipment is highly accurate. While this may be true, it only takes one error to lead to a costly recall. An incorrect adjustment by the operator, mechanical failure, or differing ethanol denaturant levels can throw off the blend ratio. With reports of vehicles having issues pointing to the high ethanol blend as the cause,... [read more]

The evolving role of ethanol corrosion inhibitors

Feature
During the era of fuel shortages and escalating crude oil prices in the 1970s, ethanol emerged as a useful blending component for petrol. In Brazil, for example, blends containing 19-25% ethanol were produced, while in the US up to 10% ethanol was blended with petrol. As blends were being introduced, environmental regulations, such as the 1977 Clean Air Act, provided guidelines for the use of... [read more]

Ensuring feedstocks are fit for purpose

Feature
With feedstock costs amounting to nearly 80% of biofuel production expense, securing an inexpensive source can be a good move. But if the oil produced from that feedstock is not high enough quality to produce EN 14214 biodiesel, the price becomes pretty much irrelevant. Germany-based analysis company ASG Analytik encountered such a situation when it received a sample of jatropha curcas from a... [read more]

Covering all angles

Feature
Over the past few months, the market dynamics for the bioethanol industry have changed. Low operating margins due to the high volatility in input and output prices have led to production slowdowns or temporary closing of a number of US bioethanol plants, at least until economic conditions improve. This was rarely the case a decade ago. Low feedstock prices allowed biofuel producers to operate... [read more]

99.9% effective

Feature
Microbiological contamination, when left unchecked, causes a range of issues including corrosion, filter blinding and fuel spoilage. These problems cause significant damage to storage facilities, downstream equipment users and most importantly, commercial performance. Preventing the problem is economically and commercially imperative, but unfortunately awareness in the biofuels sector is not as... [read more]