Alcohol fuels production

Wright, J. High-Temperature Acid Hydrolysis of Cellulose for Alcohol Fuel Production SERI/TR-231-1714 Solat Energy Research Institute Golden, CO, 1983. 

Wright, J. and d Agnicourt, C. In Evaluation of Sulfuric Acid Hydrolysis for Alcohol Fuel Production, Biotechnology and Bioengineering Symposium, 1984 John Wiley and Sons New York, 1984 pp. 105-123. 

Wirght, J., Power, A., and Bergeron, P. Evaluation of Concentrated Halogen Acid Hydrolysis Processes for Alcohol Fuel Production-, SERI/ TR-232-2386 Solar Energy Research Institute Golden, CO, 1985. 

Wright, J. D. and D Agincourt, C. G., Evaluation of sulfuric acid hydrolysis processes for alcohol fuel production. Biotechnology and Bioengineering Symp. 1984, 14, 105-121. 

Jones, J. Barkhorder P. Bomberger, D. Clark, C. Dickenson, R. Fong, W. Johnk, C. Kohan, S. Phillips, R. Sem-ran, K. Terter, N., "A Comparative Economic Analysis of Alcohol Fuels Production Options," SRI International, Menlo Park, California, 1979. 

Energy Security Act of 1980 - Legislation authorizing a U.S. biomass and alcohol fuel program, and that authorized loan guarantees and price guarantees and purchase agreements for alcohol fuel production. 

The benefits of alcohol fuels include increased energy diversification in the transportation sector, accompanied by some energy security and balance of payments benefits, and potential air quaUty improvements as a result of the reduced emissions of photochemically reactive products (see Air POLLUTION). The Clean Air Act of 1990 and emission standards set out by the State of California may serve to encourage the substantial use of alcohol fuels, unless gasoline and diesel technologies can be developed that offer comparable advantages. 

Alcohol Production. Studies to assess the costs of alcohol fuels and to compare the costs to those of conventional fuels contain significant uncertainties. In general, the low cost estimates iadicate that methanol produced on a large scale from low cost natural gas could compete with gasoline when oil prices are around 140/L ( 27/bbl). This comparison does not give methanol any credits for environmental or energy diversification benefits. Ethanol does not become competitive until petroleum prices are much higher. 

In 1991, the relatively old and small synthetic fuel production faciHties at Sasol One began a transformation to a higher value chemical production facihty (38). This move came as a result of declining economics for synthetic fuel production from synthesis gas at this location. The new faciHties installed in this conversion will expand production of high value Arge waxes and paraffins to 123,000 t/yr in 1993. Also, a new faciHty for production of 240,00 t/yr of ammonia will be added. The complex will continue to produce ethylene and process feedstock from other Sasol plants to produce alcohols and higher phenols. 

Capacity Limitations and Biofuels Markets. Large biofuels markets exist (130—133), eg, production of fermentation ethanol for use as a gasoline extender (see Alcohol fuels). Even with existing (1987) and planned additions to ethanol plant capacities, less than 10% of gasoline sales could be satisfied with ethanol—gasoline blends of 10 vol % ethanol the maximum volumetric displacement of gasoline possible is about 1%. The same condition apphes to methanol and alcohol derivatives, ie, methyl-/-butyl ether [1634-04-4] and ethyl-/-butyl ether. 

Direct fuel appHcations of methanol have not grown as anticipated (see Alcohol fuels). It is used in small quantities in California and other locations, primarily for fleet vehicle operation. Large-scale use of methanol as a direct fuel is not anticipated until after the year 2000. Methanol continues to be utilised in the production of gasoline by the Mobil methanol-to-gasoline (MTG) process in New Zealand. A variant of this process has also been proposed to produce olefins from methanol. 

Alcohol fuels, emissions control for, 10 60 Alcohol group, acylation of, 14 118 Alcoholic beverage industries, regulation of, 26 328-329 Alcoholic beverages distilled, 26 469 70 production of, 11 7... 

Biomass can be a renewable feedstock for methane. Biomass feedstocks for methane production include crop residues, municipal solid waste (MSW), and wood resources. Biomass resources for the production of alcohol fuels are estimated at about 5 million dry tons per day which could provide 500 million gallons of methanol per day. 

Methanol and ethanol are alcohol fuels that can be produced from various renewable sources. Alcohol fuels are converted from biomass or other feedstocks using one or several conversion techniques. Both government and private research programs are finding more effective, less costly methods of converting biomass to alcohol fuels. Methanol was originally a by-product of charcoal production, but today it is primarily produced from natural gas and can also be made from biomass and coal. 

Although most ethanol is now produced from corn, research has been done on producing this type of alcohol fuel from cellulosic biomass products including energy crops, forest and agricultural residues, and MSW, which would provide much cheaper feedstocks. The process of chemically converting these cellulosic biomass feedstocks is more involved and until this process can be simplified the price of ethanol will remain high. 

The waste products of a home include paper, containers, tin cans, aluminum cans, and food scraps, as well as sewage. The waste products of industry and commerce include paper, wood, and metal scraps, as well as agricultural waste products. Biodegradable wastes, such as paper fines and industrial biosludge, into mixed alcohol fuels (e g., isopropanol, isobutanol, isopentanol). The wastes are first treated with lime to enhance reactivity. Then, they are converted to volatile fatly acids (VFAs) such as acetic acid, propionic acid, and butyric acid, using a mixed culture of microorganisms derived from cattle rumen or anaerobic waste treatment facihties. 

Current interest in synthetic fuels production by Fischer-Tropsch (FT) reactions have created a need for removal of byproduct oxygenates, formed by the FT reaction. The oxygenates consist of primary and internal alcohols, aldehydes, ketones, esters and carboxylic acids. The hydrocarbon products derived from the FT reaction range from methane to high molecular weight paraffin waxes containing more than 50 carbon atoms. 

The ethyl alcohol fermentation is of course an age-old process and is so well known that little need be said about it here. The acetone-butanol fermentation is perhaps the next most important industrial fermentation process, although starch in the form of maize has been largely used as the basic material more recently suitably treated molasses has been used. The fermentation, a relatively rapid process requiring about thirty hours, produces about 60 parts of butanol, 30 parts of acetone and 10 parts of ethyl alcohol. These products already have large uses in industry and other uses are being explored. One possibility is the use of butanol in motor fuel. Jean has described a fuel, called Jeanite, consisting mainly of butanol and ethyl alcohol, which shows some promise. Of course the admixture of ethyl alcohol with petroleum is well known and an increased use of this mixture is probable. 

Despite the current decrease of oil prices, the conversion of syngas to alcohols remains an attractive objective. Many companies are involved in alcohols synthesis projects, based on high pressure or low pressure technologies, with motor-fuels and octane boosters as targets. The I.F.P. (France Idemitsu (Japan) R D program is focused on the co-produc-tion of methanol and light alcohols. These product... 

Because CNG is primarily methane, it is expected to have relatively low reactivity, with the small amounts of reactive impurities such as small olefins and alkanes being responsible for most of its reactivity (see Table 16.14). Emissions of CO are smaller than from gasoline-powered vehicles, while the effect on NOx emissions is not clear (National Research Council, 1991). As seen in Tables 16.10 and 16.11, CNG shows the highest promise for low-reactivity exhaust emissions, and this appears to be the case for its use in real vehicles (Gabele, 1995). Figure 16.40, for example, shows the estimated ozone production per mile traveled for a vehicle fueled on CNG compared to vehicles fueled on reformulated gasoline (RFG) or the alcohol fuels M85 or E85 (vide infra). These measurements and estimates based on them include the contributions from both exhaust (including CO) and evaporative emissions (Black et al., 1998). Clearly, the reactivity of the CNG-powered vehicle emissions was substantially smaller than for the other vehicle-fuel combinations. 

Liquefaction. Since the 1970s attempts have been made to commercialize biomass pyrolysis for combined waste disposal—liquid fuels production. None of these plants were in use in 1992 because of operating difficulties and economic factors only one type of biomass liquefaction process, alcoholic fermentation for ethanol, is used commercially for the production of liquid fuels. 

Vapor Pressure—Equilibrium pressure exerted by vapors over a liquid at a given temperature [2.1, 2.3]. The Reid vapor pressure (RVP) is typically used to describe the vapor pressure of petroleum fuels without oxygenates at 100°F (ASTM Test Method D 323, Test Method for Vapor Pressure of Petroleum Products) [2.5]. The term true vapor pressure is often used to distinguish between vapor pressure and Reid vapor pressure. The Reid vapor pressure test involves saturating the fuel with water before testing and cannot be used for gasoline-alcohol blends or neat alcohol fuels a new procedure has been developed which does not use water and is called Dry Vapor Pressure Equivalent, or DVPE (see ASTM D 4814-95c under Additional Information section). 

We have developed a catalyst-free method of biodiesel fuel production by supercritical methanol (10-12), and we found that the process becomes much simpler and that the yield of biodiesel is higher compared with the alkaline-catalyzed method. The aim of the present work was, therefore, to investigate the possibilities of biodiesel fuel production from rapeseed oil with various alcohols by supercritical treatment. In addition, the super-critically prepared biodiesel fuel was studied for its cold properties. 

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