DuPont is making headway on a biofuel product the chemical giant considers to be superior to ethanol.
“We are on track to have a biobutanol pilot facility operational (in 2009),” said company vice-president John Ranieri in a recent news release.
Dupont and its biobutanol partner BP are building the demonstration facility in Saltend, Hull, United Kingdom.
It is expected to have the capacity to produce 20,000 litres annually.
The two companies are also constructing a 420 million litre grain ethanol plant in conjunction with Associated British Foods that will help meet the U.K.’s 2010 renewable fuel obligations.
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The plan is to convert that facility to a biobutanol plant once the technology is ready.
The original goal was to have the pilot plant operational by late 2007 and commercial production of biobutanol before 2010, so the partners are behind schedule.
Biobutanol is an advanced biofuel, which DuPont contends offers benefits over ethanol. It delivers better fuel economy, can be used in the petroleum industry’s existing distribution structure and can be blended at a minimum of 16 percent concentrations without the need to modify vehicles.
“Biobutanol and cellulosic ethanol have the ability to transform the biofuels industry,” said Ranieri.
DuPont and BP intend to make biobutanol available globally. Existing ethanol plants can be retrofitted to produce it and it is made from the same agricultural feedstocks as ethanol.
A DuPont spokesperson said it is too soon to know how much of the biofuel market biobutanol might take, but projections show biofuel could comprise up to 30 percent of transport fuel used in key markets.
DuPont has also entered into a joint venture with Danisco to produce cellulosic ethanol. The companies are building a pilot plant in conjunction with the University of Tennessee.
Construction has begun on the facility, which is expected to produce cellulosic ethanol by the end of 2009. The plant is expected to have an annual capacity of 946,000 litres. It will convert switchgrass and corn cobs into fuel.
DuPont expects to have an economically viable cellulose ethanol process by 2010, which is when it expects to have perfected the technology to produce biobutanol at economics comparable to ethanol.
“Once we are commercial with biobutanol, we intend to combine our technologies to make biobutanol from non-food feedstocks,” said Ranieri.
