Move Over Ethanol, Here Comes Biobutanol
Gevo, the privately held biofuels start-up said that it had successfully retrofitted a demonstration-scale ethanol plant to make biobutanol.Gevo also said it planned to pound the pavement on Wall Street looking for financing to go out and buy up to five ethanol plants to retrofit.
Biobutanol is an alcohol similar to ethanol. Both can be used as a gasoline additive.But biobutanol has some clear advantages over ethanol.Some of them are:
No one has built a biobutanol biorefinery at a commercial scale. Yet. The Gevo demonstration-scale plant in Missouri has an annual capacity of about 1 million gallons. So nobody knows if this is economic at scale.
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Biobutanol is an alcohol similar to ethanol. Both can be used as a gasoline additive.But biobutanol has some clear advantages over ethanol.Some of them are:
- There is no blend wall – ethanol’s 10% limit in gasoline. Biobutanol is approved to get to 16% today – and Gevo, which is backed by investors including Khosla Ventures, Burrill & Co. and Total SA – says that “standard automotive engines can run on biobutanol blended into gasoline at any ratio.”
- Experts say that biobutanol can be put into pipelines and refineries without problems.Try running ethanol through a pipeline. It worked kind of like Mr. Clean and swept up a lot of unwanted gunk.
- Ethanol makers are trapped between the Scylla and Charybdis of corn prices and gasoline prices. Biobutanol can take multiple feedstocks (corn, stover, sugar cane) and critically can sell its output as either a gasoline additive or as a chemical feedstock to make things like plastic bottles.
No one has built a biobutanol biorefinery at a commercial scale. Yet. The Gevo demonstration-scale plant in Missouri has an annual capacity of about 1 million gallons. So nobody knows if this is economic at scale.
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PermaLink - Move Over Ethanol, Here Comes Biobutanol
