Special Asia Biofuels Report: The Top 10 Stories of the Year, and More

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest) Asia looks at petroleum reserves and exploration and concludes: our future is in biomass.
As we wrote in 2012: “There’s only one complete region for biofuels where abundant feedstock, lack of oil & gas production, rising energy demand and supportive government policy come together — and that is Asia.”
The feedstock comes in three flavors. Existing and fast-growing crops, if controversial, such as palm oil. Crops grown on land unsuitable for food crops. Most importantly, an abundance of residues – agricultural, animal, forest, municipal and industrial.
Accordingly, though Asia has a carbon challenge like every other region, and would like to be energy secure for regional security purposes — what drives Asian interest in biofuels are the opportunities to add value to waste and wasted land.
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Here are the Top 10 developments of the year.
1. Elevance and Wilmar begin commercial shipments of biobased chemicals from newly commissioned refinery
A project in Gresik, Indonesia; the company you know as Elevance Renewable Sciences; and a technology called olefin metathesis that’s highly worth knowing. ...
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2. Praj breaks ground on $25M cellulosic ethanol demonstration plant
In India, Praj Industries broke ground on its integrated 2nd Generation Cellulosic ethanol plant. The 2G Cellulosic ethanol demo plant will operate on different variety of biomass with a capacity of 100 dry tonnes of biomass per day, which includes agricultural wastes such as corn stover, cobs and bagasse. ...
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3. Seaweed-based ethanol technology gets boost in Vietnam
Deep in the Mekong Delta of South Vietnam a small bio-refinery is converting seaweed into protein, fuel-blendable alcohol, and a bacterial soil product. It is part of a bio-economy demonstration that is also enhancing shrimp quality and yield by co-cropping naturally-occurring aquatic plants as a bio-chemical feedstock.
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The conversion facility itself is in a standard shipping container that can be moved near biomass sources of interest. It has a rotary tumbler, primary 200 litre fermenter, secondary inoculum fermenter, centrifuge, and two distillation columns. A small amount of electricity from the local grid is used to drive pumps. The heat source for hydrolysis, fermentation, and distillation is a low-emission rice husk boiler, supplemented by a roof-mounted solar water heater. Gravity feed is used to move material down the conversion pathway. Freshwater is recycled, and non-toxic waste water is treated in a shallow pond before release into the environment. Carbon Dioxide from fermentation can be captured and bottled for sale as a co-product.
4. Unlocking corn stover and agricultural waste for plastic bottling
In November, Novozymes announced that it will supply enzyme technology to the world’s first biomass to glycols bio-refinery to be constructed by M&G Chemicals in China.
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5. Carbon-negative biobutanol for $2 per gallon? ITRI says its ButyFix technology has the right stuff
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There was good news out of Taiwan in November — a new biobutanol technology, early-stage — with an update from Taiwan’s non-profit Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI), that its newest biobutanol technology can increase carbon utilization from typical sugar fermentation from 67 percent to 94 percent.
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6. Sahara Forest project aims to use algae, renewable technologies to bloom deserts
In Qatar last month, we reported that Norwegian company Yara had teamed with the Qatari government on the Sahara Forest project that will use solar power and sea water to produce food crops such as tomatoes, cucumber, melon, fodder crops, freshwater, clean energy, salt, algae and for biofuel.
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By using saltwater to provide evaporative cooling and humidification, the crops’ water requirements are minimized and yields maximized with a minimal carbon footprint.
A state-of-the-art 50 m3 algae test facility – the only of its kind in Qatar and the larger region – enables commercial-scale research on the cultivation of marine algae species native to the Gulf and Red Sea for use as nutraceuticals, biofuels, and as animal and fish fodder.
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7. Develop Malaysia, develop palm oil biomass, develop bioenergy: the primer
If palm oil has been key to the Malaysian economy, palm oil biomass may be key to the next steps, say Dovre Group’s Dr. Ronald Zwart in a detailed national survey.
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8. The Haze: Clearing Southeast Asia’s smoky skies with biofuels technology
A technology developed for Europe finds it is in demand again, as technologists address the growing mountains of palm waste and its special opportunities and challenges.
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And then, along comes NextFuels, based on hydrothermal liquefaction – a/k/a/ hydrothermal upgrading.
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This hydrothermal liquefaction technology has much in common with pyrolysis in its outcomes — some residual biomass residue and a crude oil which can be burned in boilers to generate power, or upgraded into fuel.
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9. Algae to fuel developers: LanzaTech is supersizing our fries
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Earlier this year, LanzaTech, and India’s Centre for Advanced Bio-Energy, which have partnered to create a new process for the direct conversion of waste CO2 into “drop-in” fuels through an acetates-to-lipids pathway.
LanzaTech had previously developed gas fermentation technology that can directly convert waste CO2 gases into acetates. The Centre for Advanced Bio-Energy, a joint venture between Indian Oil Corporation and the Indian government’s Department for Biotechnology is working to increase the production yield of lipids (oils) by “feeding” acetates to microalgae.
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“The organism takes the CO2 + H2 and effectively converts it to acetate,” Holmgren explained.”The Center for Advanced Bioenergy Research can take our acetate and convert it to lipids (indeed, the same lipids that can be used to make drop in fuels and Solazyme makes into wonderful products like flour, creams etc.).”
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10. Acritaz Greentech taps Cool Planet system for commercial biorefineries in Malaysia
In October, Cool Planet Energy Systems and Acritaz Greentech announced that they have signed an agreement to explore the building of multiple commercial facilities in Malaysia.
The plan is to begin construction on the first plant in 2014. Acritaz will work with Cool Planet to use biomass raw materials local to the region that include palm plantation waste products such as empty fruit bunches, wood, and bark waste to make renewable, cellulosic fuels for the Asian market. READ MORE