Butanol in the UK in 2007 - that's good news, if the premium at the pump is reasonable. I hope they will succeed in co-fermenting glucose and xylose into butanol before long, so they can use cellulose feedstocks for it. Initially, they'll have to use pure glucose.

The article also seems to imply that biobutanol will be available in limited quantities and/or at increased prices relative to other fuels -- the talk is of using it as a stabilizer and an additive, not as a bulk fuel.

From previous discussions on this site, I gather that butanol has more attractive properties than ethanol. However, this article implies that there are still a few significant hurdles impeding the cheap and efficient bulk production of that substance. The possibility that a lighly blended gasoline-ethanol-butanol (E10+B05+G85, perhaps?) blend could run in an unmodified gasoline engine and be transmitted through unmodified petroleum distribution pipelines is very exciting -- solving the bulk distribution problem will save a nice bit of money and resources.

The prospect that it could reduce volatility of the fuel mixture is also important. Ethanol-gasoline mixtures form volatile azeotropes which enhance hydrocabron evaporation of standing fuel. Evaporative losses from the fuel systems of cars are a significant source of urban-area HC pollution, and one thing preventing flex fuel vehicles from achieving better Low Emission Vehicle grades. Had the Prius been fitted with FFV capabilities, I think it would not have qualified as SULEV, which would have tarnished its image and hurt its marketing, as well as hurt air quality a bit. If butanol blends pan out as a stabilizer for higher alcohol concentrations (E80+B05+G15 fuel mix?) Toyota could certify its hybrids to run on high-concentration biofuels without losing any clean air points, which would be a welcome step forward.

Many people criticize biofuels in large part due to the way they are currently produced and implemented. Corn ethanol admittedly has only small-scale energy balance and CO2 benefits, plus there is a clear limit to how much more we can produce before we run out of corn; or more properly, drive up the price of corn to the point where it no longer makes sense to produce more ethanol. (I have argued elsewhere that under the current circumstances a corn price ramp-up would render conventional ethanol wildly unaffordable well before it would have a significant impact on food prices -- which is not to say that it would have *no* impact on food prices.) FFV technology is generally deployed on oversized and overpowered trucks, "greenwashing" gas guzzlers that are often not needed for practical reasons in the first place.

But matching up cutting-edge biofuels production processes with far more efficient cars has real promise. Moving from corn to bulk biomass improves the energy balance and avaiability of the fuel. Having the chance to use it in low-polluting and high efficiency cars allows us to stretch it much farther. That's a step in the right direction, even if it is not a sufficient long-term solution.

To make things fair, we ought to squeeze butanol into one of the various renewable fuels tax breaks we have out there, or just phase them out entirely.

Hmmm.  DuPont must be looking at the short-term, because they (being chemists) have to know that the energy in biomass isn't sufficient to meet our needs if we run it through the ethanol/ICE route.

I wish I could tell them to look at ZAFC's and DCFC's.

Rafael:

You rightly point out that as the butanol plant will be in Europe it will likely run on something other than corn -- sugar beets very likely. However, their cellulostic ethanol program is U.S. oriented, and speaks of using corn plant waste as a feedstock rather than just the ears of corn, as in the conventional process. At any rate, critics of ethanol rightly point out that any food-crop based process (corn, beets, etc.) is of inherently limited potential, because the EROEI is not terribly high and the amount of increased production that can be constructed is rather constrained. Sugarcane is a limited exception, in that its EROEI is apparently not that bad, and production can be expanded a fair bit if you are willing to sacrifice a lot of rainforest. I digress...

What seemed most interesting to me was the heretofore unknown (to me) capacity of added butanol to stabilize mixtures containing gasoline and ethanol. Reading between the lines, it appears that butanol might still be too expensive or hard-to-produce to be soon introduced as a bulk fuel. But if it allows the cleaner and more efficient use of an existing bulk fuel (ethanol), then we have something very useful on our hands. Promising ethanol technologies can continue to expand without worry that transportation problems will eat into profitability, efficiency or HC emissions signature. Just add a little butanol and you can stick ethanol-blended fuels in your standard pipelines and cut down on problematic azeotropes. Not bad, even if biobutanol ends up costing $4 a gallon to make.

i want mechanisms of cars