Biogasoline: The Greener Alternative to Ethanol?
by Jeremy Elton Jacquot, Los Angeles 
on 03.28.08
Why bother with corn ethanol - heck, even cellulosic ethanol - when biogasoline will do in a pinch? Wisconsin-based Virent Energy Systems, whose liquid biofuel-powered hydrogen generator we covered a few years back, is collaborating with Royal Dutch Shell on a new venture to develop biogasoline, a hydrocarbon alternative that, unlike ethanol, could take advantage of the existing gas infrastructure.
This new project would be centered around Virent's innovative BioForming technology, which uses a solid-state catalyst to turn plant sugars into hydrocarbon molecules suitable for use in standard engines; biogasoline's main advantage would therefore be to eliminate the need for specialized infrastructure, blending technologies or new engine designs. To produce ethanol, plant sugars first have to be fermented and then distilled - a lengthier, costlier process.
Eric Apfelbach, the company's chief executive, told Cleantech's David Ehrlich that the BioForming technology would be able to "use whatever the cheapest, most available sugar stream is in that area . . . anything that's a carbohydrate that can be made soluble in water is a candidate feedstock." That would also encompass a wide range of non-food crops: corn stover, switch grass and wheat straw - just to name a few.
Moreover, Apfelbach stressed that Virent's biogasoline has a higher energy content that ethanol, and that it would deliver superior fuel efficiency. Virent's pilot plants are currently able to produce only a gallon of biogasoline a day; its engineers hope to demonstrate a commercial-size plant able to produce around 10,000 liters within the next few years. A quick perusal of the company's website didn't reveal much in terms of BioForming's emissions impact - as you'll recall, the ethanol production process has often been criticized for burning more fossil fuels than ethanol helps displace.
As with most similar technologies - other recent examples include Bay Area-based LS9 and Amyris - Virent's success will depend on the speed with which it can upscale the production process and bring its biogasoline to the mass market. While promising, Virent's technology still has a ways to go before it's ready for prime-time.
Via ::Cleantech: Virent's biogasoline gets Big Oil backing (blog), ::The Capital Times: Virent, Shell extend pact (newspaper)
See also: ::Virent Energy Systems: Liquid Biofuel Fed Hydrogen Generator, ::Lots Of Ethanol, And More on the Way
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Interesting technology, but I'm still not clear on what processing needs to happen to the feedstock before it can be used with the catalyst.
Based on their website it looks like they can only use simple sugars or starches, yet there doesn't appear to be a clear and easy process to extract these from plant cellulose- which we know from other technologies is a tough nut to crack affordably.
If we solve the feedstock issue (big if in my mind), then this could offer a rather nice way to supplement our gasoline use.
This form of fuel sounds like a great alternative to traditional gasoline. If its cheaper then gasoline I'm all for it. I can't afford $3.00 a gallon anymore.
Under the websites section for "Feedstock options" it mentions that it can work with cellulose. Looks interesting, I'll be keeping an eye out for more from TH
here's hoping that it's viable.
I've been wanting this forever now...
We found an interesting article about the problems with Ethanol on ConsumerReports.org:
http://blogs.consumerreports.org/cars/2008/03/ethanol-e85.html
"But there are some problems with increasing ethanol blends. Ethanol contains less energy than gasoline, so increasing the amount of ethanol in gasoline will likely result in lower fuel economy. Increasing standard fuel blends from zero to 10 percent ethanol, as is happening today, has little or no impact on fuel economy. In tests, the differences occur within the margin of error, about 0.5 percent. Further increasing ethanol levels to 20 percent reduces fuel economy between 1 and 3 percent, according to testing by the DOE and General Motors. Evaluations are underway to determine if E20 will burn effectively in today's engines without impacting reliability and longevity, and also assessing potential impact on fuel economy."
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Here is a full production biocrude refinery:
www.biocrude.us
www.sstp.us
The refinery produces biogasoline, biodiesel, biojetfuel, etc....68 different products have been refined from the biocrude oil. The biocrude has been named Vertroleum TM.
The biofuels are hydrocarbon based, not alchohol based.
It's easy to get excited about the fact that this fuel doesn't need any change to existing infrastructure for us to use it, but it pays to look deeper than that.
The Motonui Synfuel Plant, part of Prime Minister Robert Muldoon's "Think Big" project in New Zealand in the 1970s used a Zeolyte catalyst to convert natural gas into petrol for the same preceived benefits - an easy sell on the unsuspecting public.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_petrol
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobil_process
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeolite
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Think_Big
The point the people promoting the plant kept quiet was the fact that the conversion process wastes 60% of the energy of the original natural gas.
It has been calculated that if they had built pipelines to reticulate natural gas around the whole country, and put a free CNG conversion kit on every petrol car in the country, it would have cost less than the Synfuel plant, provided much more (and much longer term) employment (once the Synfuel plant was built it left the local settlements like ghost towns with unemployed high tech workers who had moved into the area to build the plant).
Not only would the cost of the reticulation and duel fuel conversion process have been lower than the Synfuel plant, but the 60% of the gas that would have been saved would have meant the gas reserve would have lasted 2 1/2 times as long!
The Synfuel plant was closed down in the 1990s.
I don't know that the conversion process that these guys are using will be *as* wasteful as the Mobil process used in Synfuel, but there's a good bet that converting the fuel to a form we started using in the 1800s for convenience sake will waste SOME of its energy content, and that petrol won't prove to be the most efficient energy delivery method for fuels from other sources.
At the end of the day, most of us won't be driving the same car in 5-10 years as we are today, so looking ahead it probably wouldn't be a great hardship to bring another fuel type onto the market and gradually phase new vehicles over to the new fuel.
It seems like a waste when the ethanol technology is here, I can build a ethanol still in my backyard today that produces 36 gallons of ethanol a day and store it in the corner of my garage when I am finished. Plus ethanol is a better fuel,110 octane, which translated into up to 40% combustion efficiency in an internal combustion engine, vs. 20% for gasoline. Engines running on ethanol last longer due to lower cylinder temperatures, up to 300% longer over gasoline fired engines.