by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest) … It’s been quite a year on the four-carbon platform — also known as C4, 4C, buta-something, Fantastic Four, or what have you.
Though two-carbon fuels such as ethanol have long dominated the biofuels market — and complex, multi-carbon drop-in renewable diesel, jet fuels and biodiesel have been the expansion story for advanced biofuels in the past three years — if any platform could be described as the “hottest of the hottest” right row, four-carbon chemicals and fuels are right in the heart of the roaster right now.
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In today’s Digest — why the four-carbon platform matters — and what Gevo, Butamax, Genomatica, GranBio, Rhodia, Cobalt Technologies, Green Biologics, Microvi, Myriant and BioAmber are up to — and more about a new technology called Optinol — via the page links below.
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With biobutanol, the same amount of corn that results in 13 billion gallons of ethanol and hits the blend wall, produces 10.4 billion gallons of biobutanol. Plus, the 16 percent biobutanol blend wall is encountered not at 13 billion gallons, but at 20.8 billion gallons.
One trouble spot? Octane – biobutanol is low-octane. But of course, you can top off with ethanol if needed as an octane booster.
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In California, Optinol announced that the company has achieved cost parity feasibility with ethanol for the production of bio-butanol from a wide variety of sugars.
Optinol is a collaborative venture between SynGest Inc., Unitel Technologies, Inc. and Louisiana State University Agricultural Center, The development of the Optinol process was led by Donal Day PhD at LSU AgCenter in collaboration with Ravi Randhava PhD, CTO of Optinol.
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And, to clarify, the product in question is n-butanol — vs. isobutanol — so, more like Green Biologics and Cobalt and less like Butamax and Gevo.
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To put it in market terms — n-butanol is generally seen as a more useful feedstock for chemical applications, while isobutanol has been favored for fuels.
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The Optinol team chose to engineer a production solution tailored to the organism rather than trying to tailor the organism to existing production processes. The net result is a high yield and commercially robust process to produce low cost butanol at a price competitive with ethanol.
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Earlier this month, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) awardedMicrovi Biotechnologies a grant to develop a technology that overcomes the toxic and inhibitory effects on butanol producing microorganisms, dramatically improving the yield and performance of biobutanol processes.
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Last month, GranBio and Rhodia have signed an agreement to create a partnership to produce bio n-butanol. Bio n-butanol is made from sugar cane straw and bagasse, the same raw material that is used to manufacture second-generation ethanol and which is abundant in Brazil.
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In July, Cobalt Technologies announced a strategic relationship with two prominent, but undisclosed, Asian chemical companies for the development of butadiene from a range of biomass feedstocks.
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Last week, Myriant and Johnson Matthey – Davy Technologies announced the successful production of bio-butanediol (BDO) and tetrahydrofuran (THF) made from Myriant’s bio-succinic acid at JM Davy’s facility at Teesside, England. The bio-butanediol and bio tetrahydrofuran has an overall carbon efficiency of 87 percent, believed to be substantially better than the carbon efficiency achieved in the direct fermentation route to bio-butanediol. READ MORE and MORE (Enhanced Online News/Optinol)