Can biofuels or biofraud?

Biofuels plant cellulose in Crescentino, Italy, with an estimated 75 million liters of ethanol per year from agricultural waste production. Can biofuels or biofraud? The immense costs and difficulties of producing cellulosic biofuels and algae The biofuels today most consumed are ethanol, made ​​from sugar derived from cane sugar (or sugar beet) or also from starch grains. in the US it is made ​​mainly of starch present in corn. It can also beobtained biodiesel from vegetable oils such as soybean and rapeseed oil. On the other hand, cellulosic biofuels are those biofuels made ​​from agricultural residues (eg corn stover), firewood or whole plants, all herbs [for example, switchgrass (Panicum virgatum)]. the cellulosic biofuels, including cellulosic ethanol is (produced by extraction, decomposition and fermentation of complex sugars present in cell walls of plants), as well as alternative biofuels. These biofuels are from the chemical point of view almost identical to fossil fuels, such as kerosene, diesel or gasoline. in November 2014, the company's cellulosic biofuels KiOR went bankrupt after . close its production plant in Columbus, Mississippi earlier this year have been many other biofuel companies have not been successful, but that of KiOR out for four reasons: producing the first cellulosic gasoline, accredited as such by the Agency US Environmental protection Agency (EPA); 2) be the company most valued and most supported by the venture capitalist Vinod Khosla and his company, Khosla Ventures, biofuels having been valued at around 1.5 billion dollars when he entered trading on the stock market. Khosla has been one of the most influential advocates of cellulosic fuels. in 2010, EPA established targets for cellulosic ethanol, based almost exclusively on the promises of Khosla, from production data of another company (Cello Energy) in which he had invested. Cello Energy went bankrupt the same year, after a fraud been discovered; 3) KiOR received a loan of 75 million dollars from the State of Mississippi, which would have returned only 6 million in the moment filed for bankruptcy. the Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood has said it is "has begun a fraud lawsuit against former executives KiOR and against Vinod Khosla, saying it misled investors about the amounts and yields the biofuel plant could reach. Another class action lawsuit has been brought on behalf of shareholders, who claim to have suffered financial losses by buying shares on the basis of statements by executives KiOR and Vinod Khosla, which has been found to be . false, on the production capacity of the plant 4) As a result of bankruptcy proceedings and claims of fraud, is knowing the information of what did not work well. the reasons for the failure of KiOR are simple: most of the time failed to develop the technology to produce enough biofuel and when obtained, yields were much lower than initially expected by KiOR. However, according to internal documents cited in the lawsuit the State of Mississippi, the KiOR real yields remained around 76-83 liters per ton. the fraud which was sued and condemned Cello Energy Company was due to mislabelling of fossil fuels such as biofuels for test programs. KiOR, however, believed he knew he was deceiving investors, and possibly to the Securities Commission on the amount of biofuels that could produce and yields that could be obtained. However, advertising on the production of advanced biofuels it is something that is widespread and common in many websites of different companies, in industry magazines and press releases. If we look at other biofuel companies cellulosics such as biofuels Red Rock, it seems that the federal government he has not learned anything from KiOR or Cello Energy, or indeed of any of the other cellulosic plants or algae that have gone bankrupt. They are still willing to give grants and loans based on claims of scarce yields and some technologies still under development. Biofuels Red Rock: making another KiOR? On September 19, 2015, the federal government announced a grant of 210 million dollars divided into three equal parts between the three companies, each of which plans to build a biofuel plant, under the Law of Defence Production. the three plants produce biofuels for military use. One of the three companies, Emerald, information on the raw material required for the production of biofuels reserves, but its technology is based on the same type of process of obtaining conventional biodiesel, ie vegetable oils and animal fats. its plant (based in Texas) it is the largest of the three biofuel plants, with proven technology and used in other biofuel plants in the world, even using palm oil. the other two companies, Fulcrum and biofuels Red Rock (BRR), van to build two plants for the production of cellulosic biofuels. Here we will deal with BRR, although the technology it plans to use Fulcrum is basically the same as BRR. BRR was recently acquired by Joule Unlimited, a company specializing in producing advanced biofuels company, which has focused on a different raw material and in a technology very different, although it remains to see if you can produce on a commercial scale. the technology BRR is based on a process that was invented in Germany in the 1920s is developed in three stages. in the first stage, fuel ( in this case wood, but can also be processed in the same way fossil fuels) is subjected to high temperature under controlled conditions of oxygen, which is called gasification. this makes the most of the fuel becomes a gas consists mainly of hydrogen and carbon monoxide, but still contains a lot of impurities which must be removed. the gas and free of impurities, which is called synthesis gas, undergoes a series of chemical reactions using chemical catalysts, a process called Fischer-Tropsch. It is used to produce different fuels and chemicals with nearly identical to those derived from hydrocarbons, including jet fuel properties. So far, nobody in the world has managed to produce successfully commercial scale in plants where biomass is gasified and the syngas into liquid fuels is converted using the procedure of Fisher-Tropsch, despite decades of research and development. the company that seems to come further with this technology was the German company Choren. Between 1998 and 2011, Choren was operating a small pilot biomass gasification (for the production of gas that would be burned to produce electricity initially only) plant using the process of Fisher-Tropsch. Choren, initially attracted investment Shell, Daimler and Volkswagen, but investors withdrew when it started to become clear that Choren could not produce on a commercial scale, with several periods of shutdowns, modifications and another series of operations to solve the technical problems presented one after . other Choren filed for bankruptcy in 2011; in the United States, two companies, Coskata and Range Fuels, built plants to produce on a commercial scale using this technology.Range Fuels, another company funded by Khosla, filed for bankruptcy in 2011, having produced only small amounts of methanol, instead of large amounts of ethanol. according to an article in the Wall Street Journal article, "have committed $ 162 million of taxpayers (along with a similar amount from private funding) to produce four million gallons of biofuel, which others have been producing for decades. " Another company also backed by Khosla, Coskata, he received a loan of 250 million dollars from the USDA, but would produce quantities for commercial distribution from gasification and technology Fisher- Tropsch, and in 2012 began using natural gas as a fossil fuel instead of other raw materials. every single one of these failed projects due to technical problems, which, in regard to this technology include accumulation tars, which clog vital parts of the mechanisms, difficulty in removing impurities from the gas, trouble finding suitable catalysts, and achieving the required proportion of carbon monoxide and hydrogen. it is impossible to predict whether it will ever be possible to overcome these challenges . But it is necessary for the plant proposed building now BRR succeed in production. What seems clear is that, based on past experience, any new project would have to spend huge sums of money and employed many years in research and development, and all this very slowly. There is a project of gasification of biomass in Austria, backed by the EU, using the Fischer-Tropsch process, but has also failed and has not passed the test phase, and that from 2004. BRR, on the other hand, has no experience in this technology. Has never managed any plant of this kind, however small. The associated companies that have chosen to provide the core technologies that does not seem more credible. TCG, which is going to supply the gasifier, says on its website that is using a gasifier built in Denver in 2007 and moved to Toledo, Ohio, in 2010. In Toledo, the gasifier was part TCG a demonstration project, and for its construction received a grant of almost $ 20 million Department of Energy (DoE) in 2009. according to the final report of the project, problems with the gasifier in Denver prevented could be collected samples syngas. After it was redesigned in Toledo, syngas in 2008 was finally obtained, but it was too contaminated with tar to produce biofuels. After large investments and modifications clean synthesis gas was obtained during a period four days at the end of 2009, after which the project came to an end. that is, the record production of syngas by TCG from biomass, a clean enough gas for the production of biofuels, was only four days of production. Velocys, part of the Oxford Catalyts Group, is the company that will provide technology for Ficher-Tropsch process for the plant BRR. in the years 2010/11, Oxford Catalysts Group participated in laboratory tests that were conducted in Austria and mentioned above. There are plans for the project Austria is done on a much larger scale, but still not big enough, but the company no longer is among the project partners . His biggest contract was with Solena, a company that was associated with various airlines to build a plant to convert waste into kerosene, even in London. However, Solena never build any plant and filed for bankruptcy in October 2015. At the time the federal government announced a grant of 70 million dollars to BRR in September 2014, the plant had closed KiOR and the government already had evidence that the returns announced, 254 liters per ton of dry wood, which is not surprising since there is no evidence that have never reached such high yields in the production of cellulosic biofuels is never reached. no But the claims of KiOR were modest compared with those of BRR: BRR claims it can produce almost 61 million liters of biofuel from 175,000 tons of dry wood, yielding therefore more than 344 liters per ton dry wood. apparently, the lessons remain to be learned. a bigger picture the disastrous experience of obtaining biofuels by Fischer-Tropsch process is part of a much larger failure in making cellulosic biofuels and algae, in which they have spent billions of dollars of public money. in late 2015, the Spanish energy company Abengoa mothballed its cellulosic ethanol plant in Kansas due to financial problems, after receiving a grant of 97 million dollars from the Department of energy.These facilities officially opened in October 2014, but an article in July 2015 showed that it was still not operational, and there is no evidence that it has ever been. It seems that were also technical problems which preceded the financial problems of the company. Another company also received generous subsidies was Ineos-Bio, 50 million dollars by the Department of Energy and a loan of 75 million dollars United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) for a plant in Florida, officially opened in 2013. in early 2015, the plant was closed temporarily, because the process employed in this company emitting a toxic gas that killed the bacteria needed for ferment biomass and ethanol. No information that this facility has returned to restart production. These are just some of the largest plants of cellulosic biofuels subsidized with public money have failed. A large number of projects undergoing tests supported with state funds are not included, as a small plant forAmerican Progress Inc., which received a grant of 22.3 million dollars by the Department of Energy and a donation of $ 4 million Michigan State, formally closed last year. Only one company seems to have had some success, Quad County corn Processors, which has slightly modified standard plant producing ethanol from corn in Iowa. certain enzymes would be added to extract cellulose from corn stover. This would increase yields by 6% and about 8 million liters of corn ethanol would actually be cellulosic. There seems to be no way to verify that indeed is thecase. for the simple fact that it continues to operate its plant corn ethanol, County Quad has guaranteed lending for producing 7.6 million liters of cellulosic ethanol per year, which represents almost all of the production of such fuels in the United States during 2015. a algal biofuels not seem to have fared better . a small number of companies have used government subsidies on oil production, but unfortunately not for the production of biofuels. Sapphire Energy received $ 50 million Department of Energy to develop biofuels from algae in Florida.Is selling limited algae oil as a nutritional supplement amounts. And Solazyme, a California company, received 22 million grants from the Department of Energy and another 2 million dollars from a Public Institute for the production of biofuels from algae. They sold a batch to the Army, as part of a project of a Grand Fleet green, but the exorbitant price of $ 149 3.8 liters. Since then most of their income comes from an anti - wrinkle product for skin care. Many of the subsidies goes to unproven technologies, all within the plan of Obama Clean Energy and Innovation Plan, which has driven huge spending on these "clean technologies". The cellulosic and algae biofuels still remain considering a sustainable alternative to corn ethanol and other conventional biofuels, even by many environmental organizations. it is time to end these myths to end the huge drain of public funds continue to bespent in these unfortunate adventures. This money could help reduce carbon emissions if used, for example, to insulate homes, or supporting solar energy, a proven technology with a much smaller footprint compared tobiofuels

. ---------- Almuth Ernsting is Co - Director of Biofuelwatch ---------