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Eight under $70: Which Biofuels Ventures Can Beat out Cheap Oil?

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by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest) Oil prices continue to show incredible volatility. $106 in June, $50 today. Which biofuels ventures have the pro-formas to make money in a tough market? The Digest investigates.

Avello Bioenergy

Cost: $57.50 per barrel (gasoline, diesel)

Stage: Preparing for commercial demonstration

Avello Bioenergy is commercializing proprietary technology in the evolving field of biomass fast pyrolysis.

Cool Planet

Cost: $64.00 per barrel (gasoline, diesel)

Stage: Preparing for first commercial  …

Cool Planet Energy Systems says that it can produce its drop-in fuels for $1.50 a gallon at a $50 million plant producing 10 million gallons of fuel per year. Feedstock should come from within a 30-mile radius to keep transport costs, and production costs, down.

Ensyn

Cost: $45.00 per barrel (oil refinery intermediate feedstocks)

Stage: Constructing commercial demonstration.  …

Back in April, Ensyn and Honeywell’s UOP announced that their pyrolysis process is capable of producing RTP fuel at scale, a crude oil competitor for a price of $45 per barrel (of oil equivalent). Even more startling, the RTP fuel can be upgraded at the refinery – using a modified (but apparently standard refinery equipment …)

Fulcrum Bioenergy

Cost: As low as $68.88 per barrel (diesel, jet)

Stage: Building first commercial

In November 2012, Fulcrum BioEnergy announced that it has successfully secured commitments and is proceeding toward closing $175 million in financing to fund construction of its first municipal solid waste to low-carbon fuels plant, the Sierra BioFuels Plant and to fund the development of future projects.

Joule Fuels

Cost: $50.00 per barrel (diesel)

Joule Fuels will initially commercialize Sunflow-E, with Sunflow-D for the global diesel market to follow. Unlike biodiesel, a low-concentration blendstock, Sunflow-D is comprised of diesel-range paraffinic alkanes and can therefore be blended with conventional diesel in concentrations of 50% or greater, displacing more oil.

Licella

Cost: $50-$70 per barrel (biocrude refinery-compatible feedstock)
Stage: demonstration …

Economic modelling by the University of Sydney Engineering Department, based on the results of test runs at the Large Pilot Plant (LPP), indicates that at a commercial scale the Cat-HTR technology can upgrade biomass into BioCrude at a cost that is competitive with existing conventional crude oil production.   … It uses all of the biomass, including lignin. So, higher yields, fewer discussions on how to monetize lignin.

Mercurius Biofuels

Cost: $50 per barrel (diesel, jet)
Stage: proceeding towards demonstration …

Mercurius is based on technology originally licensed from the EERC at the University North Dakota and still in early development, the C6 sugars in woody biomass (currently, sawdust) are converted to a group of organic acids via an acid hydrolysis – levulinic acid, formic acid, and the C5 sugars are converted to an aromatic aldehyde, in this case furfural.

Velocys

Cost: $50-70 per barrel (synthetic diesel and jet fuels)

Stage: Financing first commercial plant   …

Velocys has developed Fischer Tropsch (FT) microchannel reactor technologies for the efficient, economical and environmentally friendly small scale distributed production of biofuels via biomass to liquids (BTL) and liquid fuels from gas via gas to liquids (GTL).

Renmatix

Cost: $0.04 per pound (industrial sugars)

Stage: Developing first commercial plant  …

If Renmatix’ technology works at scale, it’s a new game,” we commented a year ago. “Those are 4-cent per pound sugars they propose to produce. That’s well less than 40 cents per gallon for the feedstock.  READ MORE


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