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Tuesday, March 27, 2007 BP's Bet on ButanolForget ethanol: it's hard to transport and gives bad mileage per gallon. Another alcohol, butanol, is a much better renewable fuel, says the president of BP Biofuels. By Kevin Bullis
Alternative fuels such as ethanol could help reduce carbon-dioxide emissions and decrease oil imports, but so far these biofuels only make up a small fraction of fuel use. One of the biggest challenges to ramping up ethanol use is distributing it. That's because ethanol can't be transported in the same pipelines used to distribute gasoline. What's more, ethanol delivers far less energy than gasoline does on a gallon-for-gallon basis. Philip New, president of BP Biofuels, a recently created company within the giant British oil producer, thinks it has a solution: butanol. While butanol, like ethanol, can be made from corn starch or sugar beets, its properties are a lot more like gasoline than like ethanol. That means it can be shipped in existing gasoline pipelines. And it contains more energy than ethanol does, which will improve mileage per gallon. Last month BP announced that it will be working with the University of California, Berkeley, on a $500 million, 10-year program, part of which will be devoted to research on improving biofuels such as butanol. And last year BP announced a partnership with DuPont to develop new technology for making butanol. DuPont will provide expertise in biotechnology. Technology Review spoke with New about the company's plans at a recent energy conference at MIT. Technology Review: Why is BP interested in biofuels, which would seemingly be a direct competitor to your main business? Philip New: It is possible--if the world now is really serious about climate change, and if people continue to be concerned about energy security--that given the breakthroughs in technology that now seem plausible, biofuels could represent a significant amount of the transport fuel mix in the future. I think you have a choice. Either you can try to deny it and resist it and hold it back, or you can embrace it and welcome it and make it a part of your business. And clearly BP has chosen to do the latter. TR: BP is focusing on a relatively obscure fuel: butanol. Why focus on butanol rather than on ethanol? PN: Ethanol is a good start. But ethanol was not designed to be a fuel. No one sat down and said, "Let's create a biomolecule that will operate in engines." What happened was, people said ethanol can work in engines. As a lot of people are becoming aware, it's good, but it has some drawbacks. Butanol is, we think, an innovation that overcomes many of the drawbacks. You shouldn't view butanol as being a competitor to ethanol. An ethanol plant can evolve into a butanol plant. And you can mix ethanol and butanol together, and it can actually help you use more ethanol. TR: So how is butanol better? PN: The key way is higher energy density. Whereas ethanol is around about two-thirds the energy density [of gasoline], with butanol we're in the high eighties [in terms of percent]. It's less volatile [than ethanol]. It isn't as corrosive, so we don't have issues with it at higher concentrations beginning to eat at aluminum or polymer components in fuel systems and dispensing systems. And it's not as hydroscopic--it doesn't pick up water, which is what ethanol can do if you put it in relatively low concentrations. So we can put it through pipelines. |
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Comments
rhapsodyinglue on 03/27/2007 at 1:32 AM
55
mcharend on 03/27/2007 at 9:29 AM
2
(on an atomic basis), both of which have been used in current flex engines. In short, the answer would be yes as gasoline is essentially a trash product anyway, and you can burn pretty much anything with carbon. A more specific question would be how much butanol can be utilized before you run into issues like engine knock or vapor pressure problems. That would have to be worked out by the blenders.
corporatedave on 03/27/2007 at 10:55 AM
11
Will it Blend? bwahahaha
rdtradecraft on 04/30/2007 at 6:32 PM
6
woodydel on 05/08/2007 at 10:13 PM
1
Reading link: http://www.butanol.com
Ethanol is a rip off. Farmers love ethanol because it allows them to finally "get theirs". This comes right out of the farmers' mouths first hand. They're never satified even when they get paid to not grow crops. If these farmers had any real brains, they would be falling over themselves to produce butanol. They could set up the pumps on the front lawn. As it is now, they think the upper hand is theirs and they're willing to screw you just like the Opec devils.
gilwal on 04/02/2007 at 8:55 PM
2
http://www.osti.gov/bridge/product.biblio.jsp?osti_id=843183
This company already has a process for cost effectively producing butanol.
http://www.butanol.com/
rdtradecraft on 04/30/2007 at 6:31 PM
6
You can just put butanol in your tank, start the engine and drive away, no modifications required at all on most late model cars. It's got about 90% of the BTUs per gallon of gasoline, and would turn everything from prarie grass to whey permeate(byproduct of making cheese) into a potential biofuel feedstock.
The thing everybody is working on is getting it economical to produce in quantity.
Chancellor on 07/05/2007 at 2:35 AM
3
We must also ensure that butanol can meet or exceed all of California's current fuel safety and emissions requirements in all types of gasoline engines, the devil really is in the details!
Agengineer on 03/27/2007 at 8:51 PM
3
rickthurman on 04/14/2007 at 2:00 PM
3
The issue we face in the short term is what to do with the hundreds of millions of spark-ignition ("gas") vehicles already on the road. It will easily take a generation at minimum to retire all those, even under ideal circumstances. I suspect the current US vehicle mix of majority gas/ minority diesel could switch precisely due to a more flexible competition between fuel choices (crude oil imposes its own constraints on how much of it can be broken down into gas vs diesel, and all the other petrochemicals. Biofuels and biochems in general will probably evolve to a far more diverse setup, with each production/ processing plant devoted to far more specific products meant to produce exactly what the market demands, rather than producing what the raw materials permit.
In short, I'm guessing biodiesel will be the long-term "winner" among both biofuels in particular, and post-petrol fuels in general... but ethanol/butanol will be a crucial "bridge-fuel" while we're recycling today's fleet into tomorrow's.
rdtradecraft on 04/30/2007 at 6:35 PM
6
JHuberman on 03/27/2007 at 11:13 PM
2
We need a process that uses neither food nor cropland and is environmentally sustainable.
energygeek on 03/30/2007 at 9:51 AM
2
would preclude growing our food. However, most
current research into biofuels use the waste
products, ie: Straw, corn trash, wood wastes and
used vegetable oils from the food industry as
feedstocks. Additionally, the "lignin" left over
from the fermentation process can be pelletized
and also used as a fuel in bio-pellet appliances.
My current concern is that the amount of fuel
that can be produced by these processes will
simply not be sufficient to completely replace
fossil fuels. However, I still think it's a
heluva good idea and we should be doing this
in a big way.
Best :-)
energygeek.
chrisrice78 on 03/30/2007 at 11:39 AM
1
We feed the world and they still hate us.
We need to be more concerned about our nation’s needs than the world’s.
rdtradecraft on 04/30/2007 at 7:41 PM
6
bmn on 03/30/2007 at 4:24 PM
25
nshotton on 03/31/2007 at 9:15 AM
1
jmaximus9 on 04/03/2007 at 11:26 AM
34
bqndiver on 04/05/2007 at 8:58 PM
1
Agengineer on 04/09/2007 at 11:37 PM
3
mbloore on 04/30/2007 at 5:28 PM
20
rdtradecraft on 04/30/2007 at 6:47 PM
6
netlancer on 05/17/2007 at 5:19 PM
1
Add in the fact that it takes more energy to make Biodeisel than you get out of it - it's not a self sustaining fuel source. At best it will require a energy support from fossil fuels or Electricty. Not an Economical soultion.
Unless they can find the right strain of algae. That would use about 1% of the land area, and be more effective feedstock.
And that technology is a deacde or more out.
So say the PHD's doing the research on it.
Considering we burn a few gallons of oil, and a few pounds of coal for every gallon of "alternative" fuel we create from biological feed stock. The creation of green fuels is really far worse for the environment that just burning the gallon of oil you were trying to replace. We should be researching sustainable energy technologies, not wasting money and wrecking the environment on a bunch of get rich quick technologies that at the bottom line do more harm than good.
But the world looks a whole lot different when you view it from a total energy supply food chain.
You want clean, low polution? We have one technology that can do it. Nuclear Power plants, and convert everything to electric. That's the only sustainable, clean, renewable technology that exists today.
And if you don't like nuclear power, call your power company and complain, because of third of us are already using it. DOE and EIA have the stats published.
ihatevaleroenergyco1980 on 10/28/2007 at 6:34 AM
1
furthermore with the butanol and ethanol(more logical butanol) after inital start you convert the burners etc to the created biofuel using NO energy extra. also it can be used as a fuel for power itself its endless because its RENEWABLE and cheap. its a billion fold outcome of possibilities everything has initial tolls its the long term that were looking for. and who will care about food if the world ends up like it did in "end of days"-think about it spealberg may be hollywood but hes about the only guy that thinks with logic and fact when making a movie:) the most logical approach is to combine crops to produce edible and non edible crops. and like mentioned next to ANYTHING can be used to make ethanol or butanol. crude oil IS butanol just 68 mil. year old butanol lol i know this is a "book" but i need to get my opinion out haha
rickthurman on 04/14/2007 at 2:18 PM
3
If algae can be profitably grown by the means now being experimented with (MIT is one of the leaders in this), I'd expect to see an industrial evolution from high CO2 installations (coal-fired power plants), to more general land-based installations, to floating installations that could feed off of atmospheric CO2, H2O from the ocean it's floating in, and the sunlight that's shining on it... and may not need much power for transport either. Just go with the current mainly, perhaps sailing around in the inside of the circular ocean currents. Let the Gulf Stream carry you in a big circle around the North Atlantic, with most of your transport energy used to cross the current to get on the "inside track." Float as long and slow as possible in those areas with the best combination of low winds and waves, and least cloud cover.
This could open up an area for biological cultivation that's currently not used either by humans nor the biosphere, taking a lot of the pressure off current wilderness/ crop areas (at land and sea). I don't think we've seen that kind of radical expansion of "living space" since the conquest and settlement of the prairies and steppes worldwide back in the late 1800's. And this should be a far greater short-term production and settlement opportunity, at least for the 21st century, than any spot in outer space has to offer.
BRUCE M. GRAUER on 04/24/2007 at 2:38 PM
3
Peter Franklin on 03/28/2007 at 6:09 AM
1
rickthurman on 04/14/2007 at 1:45 PM
3
The BP president (and others working on the butanol idea, see www.butanol.com for a small competitor well along the process-development path) is right in that butanol is a better choice for a Product from the alcohols. As you already are noticing, cellulosic Sources would improve the situation... what's necessary is finding a set of chemical processes ("pretreatment") that breaks cellulose, and possibly hemicellulose and lignin, down into simpler sugars that the current sugar-to-alcohol processes can then digest (literally). Most, if not all, the work currently being done on cellulosic pretreatment for ethanol will work for butanol as well.
Possibly the next step past merely "cellulosic" sourcing of biofuels will be algae, which is already an MIT research subject. While algae for biofuels is usually only associated with high-oil algae for conversion ("trans-esterification") to diesel fuel, there many species of algae. No matter what other uses are found for algae, the body as cellulose would finally be available for fermentation to alcohol fuel, if that's desired. So cellulosic butanol from algae would be one further step available, which could vastly increase the volume of Source raw material available.
This is an evolutionary process, to find the most land, water, and light-efficient process to capture sunlight into the highest possible volume of raw material -- to convert by the most efficient processes or strings of processses -- into the ideal set of biochemicals for all possible uses: fuel, fertilizer, livestock feeds, direct human food, fiber, industrial chemicals, you name it.
We are faced with an opportunity here to not just take whatever "resources" the ground presents to us, but instead to think about what the ideal fuels would look like, and figure out how to synthesize (probably via biological means from sunlight -- it would the most easily managed process, from the most widespread original energy source). I haven't found enough material yet on heavier alcohols to guess if butanol is the ideal fuel among alcohols. It certainly looks as if it is "good enough" to start the transition past ethanol.
rdtradecraft on 04/30/2007 at 6:52 PM
6
Chancellor on 07/05/2007 at 1:53 AM
3
Why not produce municipal and home biorefineries and use the hydrogen byproduct in a home fuel cell, charging station, etc?
Artemis Juan Steinmeyer on 03/29/2007 at 11:02 AM
1
Agengineer on 04/09/2007 at 11:40 PM
3