The plant, developed by renewable energy firm Agri, will process used cooking oil to create biodiesel which can then be used in vehicles.

…The plant will produce up to 16 million litres of EN14214 biodiesel every year; a European specification which Agri said is not often achievable when used cooking oil is used as a feedstock.

…Eddie O’Reilly, Agri’s biodiesel plant manager, said: “By using ISO 14064 methods we can measure the carbon footprint of our biodiesel to show at least 90% less greenhouse gas emissions when compared to regular mineral diesel. This makes it the most sustainable type of biodiesel in the world.” READ MORE

TMO’s proprietary technology platform can break down a wide range of waste biomass into cellulosic ethanol, while reducing costs through savings in maintenance, production time and capital expenditures, including reduced enzyme loadings. Utilizing cassava stalk, TMO’s conversion process will yield 70 to 80 gallons of 2G ethanol per ton of feedstock.

“The total global capacity for 2G biofuels should reach more than 4 billion gallons by 2015,” said Pavel Molchanov, energy analyst at Raymond James. “Crucial to even greater production of cellulosic ethanol is the availability of diverse feedstock options, and cassava stalk can play an important role in the Asian market.”

The flexibility and cost benefits of TMO’s technology attracted Chinese partners to develop the first industrial-scale (30,000+ tons) cellulosic ethanol plants in China using cassava. At the demonstration plant, TMO will finalize process design using optimized energy and mass balances for cassava stalk at scale. The company will apply information derived from operating the demonstration facility to develop plans and process engineering designs to advance TMO’s solution to full commercial scale.

“With more and more countries seeking affordable fuels, abundant cassava stalk will play a vital role in expanding cellulosic biofuels production,” said TMO acting CEO Robert Parker. “TMO’s technology is primed to meet growing market demand by economically converting waste cassava stalk to bioethanol at commercial scale.”  READ MORE

Life cycle assessment (LCA), or life cycle analysis as it is also known, is a technique for quantifying the environmental impact of a product or service over its life cycle.

LCA considers every stage in the supply chain from raw material production, processing, manufacturing, distribution, use, repair, maintenance and disposal or recycling. It forms the very basis of greenhouse gas (GHG) assessments and carbon footprinting.

But the way we measure the energy and GHG balances of biorenewables – like biofuels and bio-based chemicals – can be complex and requires careful interpretation.

Policy makers need to be aware of how the use of different LCA methodologies within regulatory frameworks can impact on market development, and businesses need to understand how the numbers they get from LCA’s will impact on their procurement practices and product development.

Using illustrative case studies from published and rigorous studies we demonstrate the policy implications of allocation procedure on multiple bio-based products within an LCA system.

LCA’s based on substitution credits are shown to be sensitive to how co-products are processed and to the co-product end use. LCA’s based on percentage allocation are independent of co-product processing and the co-products end market.

A substitution credit based methodology will therefore drive towards low energy input processes for all products whereas percentage allocation procedures will drive towards low energy input processes for the primary product only.

The report recommends environmental performance of biorenewables should be assessed on a case by case basis; using consistent logic but tailored to their intended purpose, and this must be communicated to a broader audience so that the reasons for any differences in results are clearly understood.  READ MORE

The NFU have said that UK biofuel growers have been subject to poor policy making by the Department of Transport, despite the growers making rapid progress with sustainability standards.

This collapse in biofuel production from British raw materials is worse than last year’s figures from the UK Renewable Transport Fuels Obligation (RTFO), which showed that less than a quarter (22 per cent) originated from British feedstocks in 2010-11.

NFU chief arable adviser Guy Gagen said: “The efforts of British farmers and certification bodies to meet EU sustainability criteria under the Renewable Energy Directive and the UK RTFO are being ignored.

“These figures show the damaging impact of UK government dithering over the past year, with British production capacity lying idle and British-grown and processed biofuel feedstocks progressively replaced by imports.  A combination of policy delay, inaction and extending timescales for renewable transport fuel targets has hit UK use of home-produced biofuels hard.   READ MORE

…“People in the UK fly more than anyone else in the world, so it is right that the UK takes a leading role in tackling aviation emissions growth,” it said. “The Committee’s recommendations would give aviation considerable leeway compared with other sectors but would ensure that aviation in future participates transparently in the UK’s efforts to bring our economy within sustainable limits.”  READ MORE

The move is designed to help give crops and sugar beet producers a head start in the biofuels market while keeping the burden of new EU regulations to a minimum. It will mean that Red Tractor farm assurance will become the route for farmers to demonstrate they meet the new sustainability requirements for biofuel crops under the Renewable Energy Directive.

The Red Tractor Crops and Sugar Beet Scheme submission to the EU Commission for recognised voluntary status has now entered the final stages of approval, following months of hard work by the NFU and Red Tractor Assurance.  READ MORE

The production of these first liquid hydrocarbon fuels – a real alternative to fossil fuels – completes a critical stage in the development of the AFS technology. This achievement provides a springboard for commissioning the company’s CO2 air-capture system. The company will then use its demonstration unit to sustainably produce petrol and other fuels. READ MORE

According to Citywire’s New Model Adviser magazine, which broke the story, the SFO obtained company and personal bank freezing orders against Sustainable AgroEnergy at a Southwark Crown Court hearing last month.

It moved following concerns the crops the company claimed to invest in did not exist or were not available in sufficient quantities to provide an investment return.

…In a statement the SFO said: ‘The SFO is investigating the activities of Sustainable AgroEnergy… and associated companies in connection with selling “biofuel” investment products involving Jatropha tree plantations in South East Asia.’  READ MORE

UK bioethanol producer Ensus received the support of EU member states’ experts on the Committee on the Sustainability of Biofuels and Other Bioliquids, she said.  READ MORE

A little bit of lubrication could make a big energy saving when manufacturing sustainable biofuels and bio-chemicals from timber

Scientists at Imperial College London have demonstrated that a key part of biomass processing could be made 80 per cent more energy-efficient by taking advantage of the slippery properties of fluids called ionic solvents. They say this could reduce the cost of biofuels by 3p per litre, around 10% of its current cost. [1]

The efficiency savings can be made during one of the energy-intensive stages of the biomass manufacturing process, when solid timber chunks are turned into a ‘soup’ of fluids and fine wood particles in an industrial grinder, which works in a similar way to a giant coffee grinder. The discovery paves the way to making the biomass industry greener.

Treating timber with ionic solvents has previously been shown to help processing wood into biofuels and chemicals. While initially this effect was only attributed to the solvents’ ability to partially weaken wood’s tough, fibrous structure, this new study suggests the energy-savings are predominantly due to the way that these fluids lubricate the wood chips as they go around in the grinder.  READ MORE