Presentation by Bart Lucarelli
Post on 22-Jan-2015
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- 1. Ethanol Fuel Programs: Sustainable Development or just another Farm Subsidy Program?
2. Topics
- Review of US & Brazilian Ethanol Programs
- Ezymatic Hydrolysis: The Way Forward
- Summary
3. The Story-line
- Current Biomass-to-Energy Conversion technologies in use
- Enzymatic conversion of feed grains, sugar and other starches into ethanol
- Convert fats and specialty crops into bio-diesel
- Convert ligno-cellulosic (LC) wastes into electricity & heat
- Current methods of producing ethanol are costly and as scale of programs increase raise serious social issues such as Food vs. Fuel trade-offs
- Advances in enzymatic hydrolysis technology may soon allow the economic conversion of LC wastes into ethanol and over come some of these barriers to traditional ethanol programs.
- Remaining commercial barriers
- High costs of cellulase enzymes
- High costs of collecting and transporting agricultural wastes
- Seasonal nature of agricultural waste production.
4. Top Ten Ethanol Producers, 2004 Source: F.O. Lichts, Annual World Ethanol Production by Country, (Millions of Gallons, All Grades), http://www.ethanolrfa.org/industry/statistics/#E 219 3972 3,535 964 462 198 110 106 79 79 0 500 1,000 1,500 2,000 2,500 3,000 3,500 4,000 4,500 Brazil U.S.A. China India France Russia South Africa U.K. Saudi Arabia Spain Million of gallons 5. A Tale of Two Ethanol IndustriesUS vs. Brazil
- US Ethanol Industry
- US is now the largest producer of fuel ethanol (EtOH)
- Output has almost quadrupled from 4,180 million liters in 1996 to 16,195 million liters (ML) in 2005
- 2005 EtOH output equals around 3% of US motor gasoline usage by volume; 2% by energy content
- By 2008, USDA and RFA forecast that US EtOH output will increase to 30,000 ML
- 9O% of US EtOH is produced from corn using 13% of total 2005 US corn output
- EtOH plants are located largely in mid-west corn belt
- Preferred technology: Dry milling, which produces distillers dry feed grains as a by-product
- Brazil Ethanol Industry
- Brazil was once the worlds largest EtOH producer; now is running a close second to US at 16,000 MLin 2005
- Brazil produces all of its EtOH from sugar cane using straight sugar cane juice plus some from molasses
- Plants located in southern & central parts of Brazil
- Considered lowest cost producer of EtOH in the world.
6. Figure 1 Brazil has the lowest cost of ethanol production.Brazils unsubsidized price for EtOH is currently lower than the cost of petrol Sugar Cane Source: Michael Wang. ANL, March 2006, Bangkok Conference on Alternative Fuel for the Transport Sector Sugar Production Cost Estimated Cost (US$/Ton in Dec/00) Production (Mt) 2002 22,7 5,4 2,6 19,0 2,3 6,6 5,1 7,3 10,3 1,5 1,5 0,9 7. A Tale of Two Ethanol Industries (cont.)
- US Issues
- Cost of producing EtOH in US is very high
- US EtOH Industry can only survive with substantial help from Government:
- Renewable fuels standard requires U.S. refineries and filling stations to use 28,500 ML/yr of bio-fuels by 2015 with1,000 ML coming from cellulose.
- Duty on imported EtOH: $0.14/liter
- EtOH exempted from Gasoline Tax in many States
- EtOH Excise Tax Exemption - $0.13/liter
- Other state and Federal subsidies.
- Inefficient way to produce transport fuels
- Pimentel and others argue that it takes more energy to produce a liter of ethanol from corn than the energy content of that liter of EtOH.
- USDA disagrees strongly with that view, but the energy pathway efficiency is still very low.
- Brazil Issues
- Very small domestic market; growth of Brazis EtOH industry is highly dependent on exports
- High import duties in the US and elsewhere are limiting EtOH exports from Brazil.
- Fuel vs. Food issue resurfaces whenever sugar prices jump or if a drought or natural disaster affects sugar cane crops.
- Domestic regulations related to blending ratios continue to create government-caused supply fluctuations.
- Water and land required to expand sugar cane output = significant local environmental impacts.
8. The US ethanol industry is concentrated in the mid-west where feedgrains are grown
- 1995 data
9. Br 10. Enzymatic Hydrolysis: The Way Forward?
- New crops and conversion technologies needed for EtOH to have a significant impact on fossil fuel usage
- US corn-to-EtOH program has limited potential and is too expensive. Without huge subsidies, it would collapse.
- Growth in Brazils EtOH industry is limited by high import duties in US and elsewhere and environmental impacts of expanding sugar cane plantations
- Technology of the Future: Enzymatic Hydrolysis
11. Enzymatic Hydrolysis: Has its time finally come?
- Short answer is we are very close but.
- Cellulose-to-biomass technologies still need further improvement
- Resource selection must be sensibly done.
- Reliability and seasonality of biomass fuel supplies remains a continuing question.
12. Enzymatic Hydrolysis
- But, to achieve substantial increases in EtOH production, all countries, including Brazil, will need to turn to ligno-cellulosic biomass as an additional feedstock.
- In the US, EtOH production is expected to plateau at 40,000 ML by 2010, unless biotech firms develop new varieties of corn with higher yields/acre or higher levels of fermentable starch levels.
- US EtOH production can increase to 225,000 ML if cellulosic biomass is relied on as a future feedstock.
- Before this feedstock can play a significant role, improvements in process economics are needed
13. Progress in Commercializing Enzymatic Hydrolysis
- Two of the Worlds largest enzyme producers Genecor International and Novozyme- have worked under a US DOE contract to achieve a 50-fold reduction in the cost of cellulase.
- US DOE has claimed that:
- 10-fold cost reduction was achieved in 2002
- 30-fold improvement was achieved by 2004.
- Examples:
- Genecor has developed enzymes that allow a simplified process for producing EtOH from cellulose.
- Novozyme is building a demonstration plant in Nebraska that will use its brand of improved enzymes.
- Other technological breakthroughs expected to reduce the cost of producing EtOH from cellulose such that enzymatic hydrolysis will become the cost effective option for producing EtOH in most countries
- Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines and most other ASEAN countries can then expand their EtOH programs to include agricultural wastes
- Given the abundance of agricultural wastes in most ASEAN countries, the shift in feedstocks should result in EtOH finally achieving a significant displacement of oil imports.
14. Map 1 Growth of cellulose-to-ethanol industry will be helped in US by the favorable location of ethanol plants to crop residues 15. Map 2 Potential location of Ethanol Plants in 2025 with application of enzymatic hydrolysis technologies Source: Michael Wang, Argonne National Lab, USA 16. Even Brazil land of low cost sugar cane- has tremendous potential to produce EtOH from cellulosic wastes.
- 436 million tonnes of sugarcane were harvested in 2005 from
- ~ 5 million hectares
- 55% used for sugar and 45% for EtOH
- 16 billion liters of fuel ethanol produced
- 122 million tonnes of bagasse was produced in 2005
- Currently being burned in inefficient CHP plants, capable of producing 7.6 GW of electric capacity
- With improved enzymatic hydrolysis systems, Brazil can theoretically produce 25 billion liters of EtOH from its bagasse
- Even if only 30% of bagasse and cane waste is converted to EtOH, Brazil could still produce 6.6 billion additional liters of EtOH
- Plus the lignin, which is left over after cellulose is converted to EtOH can provide all the electricity & steam requirements of sugarcane-to-EtOH plants
17. For each tonne of sugar cane, only 6%-9% is in the form of sucrose. Rest: high moisture fermentable waste 18. Summary
- Using increased amounts of food crops and arable land to produce more ethanol will raise Food vs. Fuel debate to level that will render current ethanol production methods as unsustainable.
- Subsidies in US are neither sustainable nor desirable.
- Way forward is to use enzymatic hydrolysis to convert cellulosic wastes into ethanol at a reasonable cost.
- Process produces lignin as a by-product, which can be used to produce power and steam, effectively allowing ag industry to have his cake and eat it too.
- Farmers can earn extra income (some, not much) from selling their residues and wastes to enzymatic hydrolysis plants
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