Wednesday, June 19, 2013
Friday, June 7, 2013
Top 12 Ways to Transform Biofuels Using Materials Already Around Us
June 04, 2013
Jim Lane, Biofuels Digest Great ideas abound for new feedstocks and novel infrastructure. We admire so many of them: jatropha, carinata, switchgrass, sweet sorghum, blender pumps, systems-at-sea, and so much more.
But what about technologies that bolt-on a different processing unit, but keeps everything else the same. Or uses an abundant, odious and low cost feedstock?
That’s a frugal fuel. In these nefarious economic times, why not make do with what’s already in place?
Here are our Top 12 ways to transform biofuels using materials — usually waste by-products, or lower-value materials — already around us.
12. Glycerine
There’s a small market for glycerin as a building block material, but it has been overwhelmed by the supply coming from some biodiesel operators who have been producing a pure enough glycerine for sale into the industrial glycerin market — many biodiesel operators haven’t been able to produce it at sufficient purity and it has been distributed at very little value into the feed market, or even landfilled.
Then, along come numerous technologies aimed at converting glycerine from a low-value product into a high-value target material, such as isoprene (the main ingredient in synthetic rubber).
Jim Lane, Biofuels Digest Great ideas abound for new feedstocks and novel infrastructure. We admire so many of them: jatropha, carinata, switchgrass, sweet sorghum, blender pumps, systems-at-sea, and so much more.
But what about technologies that bolt-on a different processing unit, but keeps everything else the same. Or uses an abundant, odious and low cost feedstock?
That’s a frugal fuel. In these nefarious economic times, why not make do with what’s already in place?
Here are our Top 12 ways to transform biofuels using materials — usually waste by-products, or lower-value materials — already around us.
12. Glycerine
There’s a small market for glycerin as a building block material, but it has been overwhelmed by the supply coming from some biodiesel operators who have been producing a pure enough glycerine for sale into the industrial glycerin market — many biodiesel operators haven’t been able to produce it at sufficient purity and it has been distributed at very little value into the feed market, or even landfilled.
Then, along come numerous technologies aimed at converting glycerine from a low-value product into a high-value target material, such as isoprene (the main ingredient in synthetic rubber).
