Aemetis Breaks the Blending Barrier in India with High Quality Distilled Biodiesel

(Aemetis) Aemetis, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMTX), an advanced renewable fuels and biochemicals company, announced distilled biodiesel produced by its subsidiary in India has been used by bulk customers to replace 100% petroleum diesel with 100% distilled biodiesel, reducing emissions by 80% and providing cost savings to customers.

Traditionally, in Europe and in the United States, biodiesel is blended in the range of 5% to 20% with petroleum diesel due to colder temperature conditions. With southern/western India’s tropical climate, Aemetis led the introduction of 100% distilled biodiesel in truck, bus, taxi and stationary generator sectors as a 100% replacement of petroleum diesel.

The 99.8% pure distilled biodiesel produced by Aemetis has superior attributes such as a high cetane number (66-68) compared to the regular biodiesel cetane number of about 51 along with excellent lubricating properties to reduce engine wear.

The India diesel market is currently estimated at 25 billion gallons per year, which is significantly larger than the current India gasoline market of 5 billion gallons per year. The current biodiesel production capacity in India is only about 250 million gallons.

“We are excited to lead the replacement of 100% petroleum diesel with 100% distilled biodiesel in India where 13 Indian cities rank among the 20 most polluted cities in the world,” said Eric McAfee, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Aemetis.

“We have succeeded in working with major bulk fuel customers to convert their fleets to 100% distilled biodiesel to achieve significant cost benefits as well as help improve the environment,” said Sanjeev Gupta, Managing Director of Aemetis’ India biofuels subsidiary, Universal Biofuels, based in Hyderabad.

Aemetis owns and operates a biodiesel production facility with a capacity of approximately 50 million gallons per year (190 million liters) near Kakinada, located on the East Coast of India. After the recent deregulation of diesel prices and approval for direct market access, Aemetis’ Universal Biofuels subsidiary expanded its sales team and increased production. READ MORE and MORE (Biodiesel Magazine)

Excerpt from Biodiesel Magazine: ... Various updates currently proposed in ASTM requirements related to unreacted components, and most of the other requirements that might pop up in the future related to metals, salts and so forth, can all be addressed today with biodiesel distillation.

Distillation is chosen for various reasons, from a desire to change corn oil biodiesel’s red color to the need to remove high sulfur and metal content from yellow grease or some animal fats, for example. Biodiesel resulting from distillation is the purest form of the fuel.

Through distillation, unreacted oil components—mono-, di- and triglycerides, metals, catalyst, salts and pigmentation—are left over as the column bottoms and need to be drained off or sent out along with crude glycerin.

Biodiesel from various feedstock distills at various temperatures. The range is between 210 degrees Centigrade to 250 degrees C. As you can see, the biodiesel distillation process operates at a very high temperature compared to other parts of the production process.

The typical and cost-effective provider of heat to this process is a thermal fluid (or thermal oil) heater. A thermal oil heater has the capability to operate at a very high temperature, if designed ahead of time to handle high temperatures. The thermal heating fluid is the heat-transferring liquid instead of, for instance, steam in a steam boiler or water in a water heater. The thermal fluid that is used as the heat transfer liquid in the heater should be capable of handling very high temperatures; if not, the high temperatures will disintegrate the thermal fluid, requiring expensive heating fluid replacement.

Due to the high-temperature operations, heat transfer equipment such as heat exchangers and condensers should meet the American Society of Mechanical Engineers specifications or be built to ASME specifications. Also, due to the high temperature of biodiesel during the process, a potential hazard for flashing exists. At very high temperatures, and with enough vapor present, any liquid can flash with sudden exposure to air. Care should be taken during the design process to address these issues for proper and safe operation.

Another consideration often overlooked in the biodiesel distillation process is structural related. The reactors or columns involved should be able to withstand constant expansion and contraction. They must also have enough thickness and support to handle high heat. Insulation is also extremely important. Other parts of the biodiesel production process could survive with little or no insulation, but in the case of distillation, insulation is a critical component and it is well worth the investment to improve the efficiency and reduce operation costs.
A couple of glaring disadvantages with biodiesel distillation are loss of yield due to distillation, which could range anywhere from 1 to 5 percent by weight, depending on the feedstock and the biodiesel conversion process; and the high temperatures inherent with distillation result in the failure of oxidative stability, so an additive needs to be added for the distilled biodiesel to meet the ASTM specification.

When a typical customer uses clear biodiesel resulting from a distillation process, they rarely would like to buy anything else. It is not just the perception, but a clear biodiesel blends better than normal biodiesel even though both clear and normal biodiesel meets the ASTM specification. Biodiesel distillation does not do much to the cloud point of the biodiesel, but by restricting mono- and diglycerides to next to nothing, the blending and related filter plug issues are considerably reduced. Some of the larger oil companies that are buying wet gallons restrict mono- and diglyceride values, and metals. The specification is easily achievable with biodiesel distillation instead of a hit-and-miss approach by trying to fix the existing biodiesel process on the frontend. READ MORE