A new, renewable, drop-in, waste-based fuel emerges, competitive with $30 oil

Out of the EU comes a biogasoline blendstock made from waste residues in a novel process that promises to radically slash the cost of bioconversion. The Digest reports.

In Germany and Portugal, a new drop-in biofuels process has emerged which is cost competitive with $30 oil, according to the inventors. The process breaks even with crude oil, on an 10-year amortized basis for capex, at roughly $20.30 per barrel of crude oil (assuming refining costs of $8.66 per barrel).

The drop-in gasoline blendstock, for a 100,000 ton per year plant (roughly 36.7 million gallons), is expected to cost $0.69 per gallon based on the latest estimates for corn stover — less, in the case of sugarcane bagasse.

Payback on a $120 million capital expense, based on the April 2016 RBOB gasoline price of $1.14 per gallon, would be under 6 years.

This technology was developed in the laboratories at University Nova in Lisbon, Portugal, European Union, and funded by the Engineering Company Inventus. Many of the technologiy’s aspects are described here, in US Patent application 13/616 421.

According to the technology’s inventor, Pedro Brito Correia, the process converts lignin, cellulose and hemicellulose to a biogasoline composed of furanic and benzenic compounds (note, it does not contain benzene, but only non-toxic benzenic compounds), from the non-food agricultural wastes, including corn stover or sugar cane bagasse.

Feedstock costs

One key for this technology is its use of the complete waste residue, rather than leaving the lignin for combustion. So, the feedstock costs will be less than other biofuels technologies. Let’s look at that.

For contrast, crude oil remains at a low point in its price cycle, currently costing $34 per barrel or roughly $226 per US ton.

By contrast, corn stover has been priced at roughly $55 per ton by commercial project developers and as high as $115 per ton for a fully finished, homogenized biomass, by the US Department of Energy in its latest cost forecast. In an analysis of corn stover as a feed source, Iowa State came up with a figure of $72 per ton for stover with 20% moisture content — equating to $90 per bone dry ton.

Sugarcane biomass is generally harder to price, as it is generally combusted at mills as a power and heat source. There are roughly 4000 KWh in a dry ton of bagasse — at $0.08 per KWh (average cost in Brazil), that’s around $350 per bone dry ton to substitute  utility power for bagasse power. But some experts suggest that up to 30% of bagasse would be available if the boilers were more efficient, plus all the cane trash — for the collection cost of the harvesting. Which was reported here (for Sudanese cane) at $0.81 per ton based on mechanical harvest.