BP warning over biofuels Russian roulette

By: Patrick Raleigh, Editor, Process Engineering

London — The biofuels industry will be “playing Russian roulette” if it takes government support or public backing for granted, warns Phil New, president of BP Global Biofuels business. The industry will rely on regulatory drivers, which are linked to political and public opinion, for the next decade at least, he added at the Clean Fuels Finance Forum, 29-30 Jan in London.

“This industry is going to be reliant on the goodwill and support of society,” New commented. However, he also noted that people are now becoming better informed about the environmental trade offs involved in producing first generation biofuels.

“The biodiesel industry here in Europe is beginning to realise that the sources of the palm oil that are necessary to meet the regulatory demands bear consequences themselves, such as the impact of growing palm on certain soils and impact on biodiversity in tropical areas.”

Likewise, New said there was increasing concern about the use intensively farmed corn and unclean coal as its energy source in the US ethanol industry — as well as the potential impact of biofuels on food prices.

“We need to move away from carbohydrate as the main input into biofuels to resolve that issue,” said New. “There simply isn’t enough arable land in the world today to meet the potential that biofuels could meet without having a completely unacceptable food price rises.”

The BP executive added that bioethanol is a poor fuel molecule compared with the fossil fuels that it is seeking to replace or the advanced and more complex alcohol molecules that are now under development.

“It [bioethanol] can’t be transported and has lousy fuel efficiency characteristics. It is, in many applications, potentially quite unsafe and can be very corrosive and can only be used in most car engines in relatively low concentrations.”

Nevertheless, BP sees biofuels as a big part of a future energy mix. “There is a real prospect that biofuels could amount to up to 30% of the world’s road transport fuel needs by 2030 in a way that is sustainable that delivers genuine greenhouse gas benefits,” said New.

Technology — in particular the development of next generation biofuels — will provide the answers to the key questions surrounding the industry today, continued New. He went on to highlight BP initiatives such as its investment in an energy bioscience institute and research into lignocellulosics and advanced biomolecules in this regard.

*Last year BP and DuPont announced plans to jointly develop, produce and market new biofuels in the UK. The first product, a biobutanol, will be launched next year as a gasoline bio-component.

The companies are working with British Sugar to convert the country's first ethanol fermentation facility to produce biobutanol. The unit, at Wissington, Norfolk will have a capacity of 30ktpa and be jointly owned by BP, DuPont and British Sugar.

The companies have also launched a study to examine the feasibility of constructing larger facilities in the UK. The partners envisage such a unit could have a capacity of around 250ktpa. While biofuels today represent less than 2% of global transportation fuels, projections show that they could become a 20-30 % of the transport fuel mix in the key markets of Europe and North America.

Biobutanol's low vapour pressure and its tolerance to water contamination in gasoline blends facilitate its use in existing gasoline supply and distribution channels. It can be blended into gasoline at larger concentrations than existing biofuels, without the need to retrofit vehicles, and offers better fuel economy than gasoline-ethanol blends.

Initial production of the Wissington biobutanol will be based on an existing ABE (acetone, butanol, ethanol) fermentation technology, but BP and DuPont are developing production technology to make the product more competitive with ethanol.

The two companies plan to use a range of feedstocks in the production process. These, said BP, include sugar cane or beet, corn, wheat or cassava, and, in the future, cellulosic feedstocks from fast growing "energy crops" such as grasses or agricultural byproducts.

As production of biobutanol is similar to ethanol and uses similar feedstocks, existing ethanol capacity can be retrofitted to produce biobutanol, according to BP.