The Versatile Ethanol Molecule: Ethylene, with a Similar Molecular Structure to that of Ethanol, Has Enormous Market Opportunity around the World.

by Susanne Retka Schill (Ethanol Producer Magazine) Knock a water molecule off ethanol and you’ll get ethylene, C2H4—the most widely produced organic chemical globally that is the basis for scores of other chemicals and hundreds (maybe thousands) of products, from antifreeze and surfactants to synthetic fibers, plastics and packaging. Global ethylene production in 2016 was greater than 150 million metric tons, with more than half going to produce polyethylene.

The biggest problem for ethanol producers is that virtually all of that ethylene currently is produced from either crude oil-based naptha or natural gas-based ethane, with shale gas promising to be the lowest-cost feedstock for years to come in the U.S.

But fossil sources are losing favor among those looking to reduce carbon footprints. And that represents a big opportunity for ethanol producers.

At 2 percent, the market share for biobased polymers is still quite small, with 7.5 million metric tons produced in 2018, according to the German Nova-Institute. But while liquid transportation fuel demand is forecast to decline in the decades ahead, a United Nations Global Chemicals Outlook projects the size of the global chemical industry—conventional and biobased—to double by 2030.

The investment cost per unit to produce ethylene from ethanol is only 15 to 20 percent of the cost to produce it in a steam cracker, he (Frank Liotta, executive vice president and chief operating officer of New Jersey-headquartered technology provider Petron Scientech Inc.) explains. Ethanol-to-ethylene is a catalytic process followed by distillation for purification, with yields better than 99 percent.

Petron is working with partners through its sister company, BioChem, to develop fully integrated biorefineries in India and Portugal. Integrating the ethanol production process with ethylene reduces processing costs and eliminates logistic costs for transporting ethanol, Liotta says. Completion of the first plants is expected in 2022 and 2023.

While the U.S. has just one ethanol-to-ethylene and ethylene oxide (EO) plant (Croda in Delaware), Petron has more than one U.S. customer considering its modular technology. “In those cases, they would be buying the ethanol and producing ethylene oxide on the site where they make surfactants or other EO derivatives,” Liotta says. On-site production of ethanol-based EO is competitive, he says, if you factor in the increasing cost of shipping the hazardous chemical.

“In general, although it doesn’t have the image, plastics are one of the more sustainable products, because of low energy consumption compared to glass or paper,” he (Braskem's Marco Jansen, circular economy and sustainability leader for Europe and Asia says. “The problem is it is so durable. Its negative image is more due to waste than the product itself.” Rather than working toward biodegradable plastics, which would return the carbon to the atmosphere, he suggests recycling is the better approach to concerns about the environmental impact of plastic waste.

Sugarcane as the ethanol feedstock adds to the plastic’s sustainability profile, because of its carbon footprint as a perennial crop and the standard industry practice of generating electricity from waste streams.

Jet fuel from ethanol is another promising market with potential to grow. “The aviation sector is crying for sustainable aviation fuels,” says Freya Burton, chief sustainability officer for LanzaTech. The company is in the engineering stage of scaling up the catalytic conversion of ethanol to synthetic paraffin kerosene—alcohol to jet fuel, or ATJ. Developed in partnership with the U.S. Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, LanzaTech has taken the PNNL process from bench to pilot scale, and is now planning a 10 MMgy demonstration commercial-scale plant at its Freedom Pines research facility in Soperton, Georgia. “That’s where we scale up other chemicals that we make besides ethanol,” Burton says. “We expect mechanical completion of the ATJ in 2021, and are looking at about 10 MMgy for the first site, scaling up to 30 MMgy facilities, almost in parallel.” LanzaTech will be sourcing sustainably produced ethanol, not producing it on-site in Georgia.

The ATJ has been used in two test flights, one to Europe and the other to Japan, and has met ASTM standards for synthetic jet fuel, with blending allowed up to 50 percent. The potential market is substantial. Total global fuel consumption by commercial airlines totaled 95 billion gallons in 2018.

In addition to ATJ, LanzaTech is working with its Chinese partners to develop new markets beyond fuel blending. “We’ve taken some of the ethanol and are converting it into PET for consumer goods, synthetic fiber for apparel or packing materials,” Burton says. The commercial-scale plant recycling steel production emissions came online last year in May and has produced more than 10 million gallons since, Burton says. “The scale up is going well.” Other projects are in various stages of engineering, with those in Belgium, India and South Africa recycling waste gases, and the Aemetis project in California using LanzaTech technology to convert gasified agricultural residues to cellulosic ethanol.

Export
The U.S. Grains Council is looking to capitalize on the growing interest in industrial ethanol, ATJ and bioplastics as a potential outlet for U.S. ethanol exports. Speakers from India and Nigeria addressed the topic at the Global Ethanol Summit last October and the council is working on research that will be released later this year.

Olaoluwa Bamikole, consultant and founder of Zenith Agroethanol Nigeria, explained that although the country allows E10, very little is used as there are no blending facilities. Furthermore, about 60 percent of the nation’s 200 million people live in economically poor rural areas with few cars.

“The USGC’s objective is to export ethanol, but unfortunately, the present government does not want that,” Bamikole says. “They want to develop local production. I wish an American company would show interest in developing ethanol plants here. We have cassava and can use sorghum, molasses and corn.”

Bamikole points to another potential market for ethanol in African nations reliant upon firewood and kerosene for cooking stoves—an issue of indoor air quality and, in the case of firewood, the safety of the young girls who traditionally collect it. Bamikole estimates that if all families in Nigeria alone, with its population of 200 million, used 1 to 2 liters of ethanol per day for cooking, it could amount to 42.8 billion liters annually. READ MORE