Shell: Expects to Be Producing Advanced Biofuels at Scale, in US, by End of Decade

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest) Shell VP Matthew Tipper, at ABLCNext: “We will likely begin manufacture in the southeast United States. We plan to be operational by late this decade. “We believe our best bet is woody biomass and energy crops as feedstocks. We plan to do this with a scale-up of smaller plants with widespread feedstock availability.”
“The RFS is key to Shell’s advanced biofuel manufacturing ambitions. However, we continue to support RFS revision out of necessity. But NOT repeal.”
“Importantly, advanced biofuels could ultimately supply a significant part, perhaps all, of Europe’s transport fuels needs. So we have big plans. We have a credible vision.”
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Now one thing we have learned over the years of ‘learning by doing’ is that getting it right is hard. It’s very hard.
There will be false starts and disappointments and plans re-written. But difficulty is not stopping innovators making progress. In Shell, we have built six pilots and have a 7th on the way.
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A truly sustainable global energy system doesn’t just need to be lower carbon – it needs to deliver more energy to meet the needs of a growing and affluent world. This means change including the switch from coal to cleaner-burning natural gas, a strong and stable carbon pricing system, the potential for carbon capture and storage (CCS), as well as the role of biofuels and liquid fuels.
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Aqueous Phase Thermal Conversion (APTC) produces fungible drop-ins from cellulosic feedstocks. The pilot plant at our Technology Center in Houston is operating and providing valuable data.
We are now looking carefully at reactor scale-up, and will do so for the year or two.
The Reverse Acid Pre-Treatment (RAPT) process is a proprietary biomass deconstruction technology that we believe gives beneficial yield and operating performance. A pilot plant will be operational at the end of next year for the production of cellulosic ethanol.
Additionally, Shell catalyst company, CRI, is the exclusive worldwide licensor of IH2 Technology, which was developed at the Gas Technology Institute (GTI) in Des Plaines, Illinois.
This technology directly converts biomass to cellulosic hydrocarbons such as gasoline, diesel or jet fuels via a two stage thermochemical process. The technology uses tailored CRI catalysts.
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With Virent we have developed a gasoline made from sugars that has this year been registered by EPA for blending in gasoline at up to 40%. We have made a jet product that can be blended at 15% and is going through the certification process and have partnered with Rolls Royce to continue development. The technology will also make road diesel and marine diesel fuel."
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“APTC is very close to Virent” Tipper explained, ” in fact it is a two stage process, and the second stage is Virent. But in the case of Virent what you have typically seen elsewhere to date is a sugars to hydrocarbons route, and we have a distinctive digestive first step where we dissolve the biomass as a pretreatment. We don;t actually produce a sugar, we do produce an intermediate that Virent can process, and this process materially reduces the capital cost, and we convert all the biomass." READ MORE (includes complete speech and interview notes)