Biobutanol Plans in Korea and India
23 September 2008
UK-based Green Biologics (GBL), a biotechnology firm working on cellulosic biobutanol (earlier post) has signed an agreement with Laxmi Organic Industries to develop and construct a commercial scale demonstrator for biobutanol in India.
Laxmi Organic Industries is a leading Indian biochemicals manufacturer that ranks among the world’s top 10 producers of ethyl acetate.
GBL will work with Laxmi to develop and build a commercial demonstrator plant in Mumbai that will use molasses as a feedstock and produce 1,000 tonnes of butanol per year. Plans are to have the plant fully operational in 2010.
Separately, in South Korea, the government and private sector unveiled a plan to invest 99.4 trillion won (US$87.5 billion) in the next five years to build up six key industries and 22 separate projects that can best help fuel the national economy.
Among the projects to be supported is the large-scale production of biobutanol from algae.
Biobutanol from Algae...you could get some biodiesel from it too...and probably some protein for animal feed.
The question is, how efficiently can you get those things. All the biobutanol processes I've read about wasted a fair amount of the energy on byproducts that we don't need nearly as much of as we need fuel.
Thoughts?
Posted by: Healthy Breeze | 23 September 2008 at 10:23 AM
BP was very bullish on butanol and even claiming that they could be come earlier than cellulosic ethanol, but so far it hasn't materialized. The problem is that they use bacteria and not yeast, bacteria are not as robust as yeast so building a bio reactor than can produce 1 Millons gallons a year is a hard nut to crack.
Posted by: Treehugger | 23 September 2008 at 01:30 PM
We could feed the corpses of executed prisoners to the algae and solve our energy independance and prison overcrowding problems in one
Posted by: norman | 23 September 2008 at 01:34 PM
norman,
Not very constructive nor funny.
There are lots of ideas waiting in the wings for years that may come to pass now that it looks like expensive oil is here to stay. It has been shown that people buy gasoline in the U.S. at $3 per gallon and buy just about as much at $4 per gallon. This shows the oil companies and refiners that they can get a higher price for the product and still sell volume.
Posted by: sjc | 23 September 2008 at 02:30 PM
There is not enough BIO in the US for a large fraction of automotive fuel needs. National Geographic estimated that 98 percent of the US old growth forests were gone. Speculation, not shortages, are the cause of high oil prices. Whilst oilshale processing is hard to do at 2 dollars a gallon of gasoline, and it takes time to build processing plants, there would be an immediate lowering of prices with the US government forbidding the sale of oil in the US purchased on a futures contract whilst funding extraction plants. ..HG..
Posted by: Henry Gibson | 25 September 2008 at 11:13 PM