According to the IEA Perspectives (or the EU SET Plan), the share of Renewables is expected to increase in the coming years. Biodiesel is a well-known technology and the production potential of installed plants is largely underexploited. So it seems reasonable to presume that Biodiesel production will still keep growing in the near future. However, competition for feedstock supply, development of new technologies (i.e. green diesel) and concerns about biodiesel degradability and long-term effects on engines have also to be taken into consideration.
So what will be the most probable development of biodiesel production in the next 10-20 years?Will it keep growing or will it be outcompeted by other Renewables?
Most of the fuels being produced today are what are considered first generation, which are characterized by mass production and well established technology. Second-generation biofuels are utilizing the non-food portions of terrestrial land agricultural products such as stover (leaves and stocks) from corn, wood chips and other plant materials for ethanol and algae for biodiesel and jet fuel.
http://c-3.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Future-of-Biofuels-Paper-FINAL.pdf
Dear Dr. Prof.Lala Behari Sukla. It is very clear explanation of Generation by utilizing bio fuel. Thank you sir
Biodiesel is a safe alternative fuel to replace traditional petroleum diesel. It has high-lubricity, is a clean-burning fuel and can be a fuel component for use in existing, unmodified diesel engines. This means that no retrofits are necessary when using biodiesel fuel in any diesel powered combustion engine. It is the only alternative fuel that offers such convenience. Biodiesel acts like petroleum diesel, but produces less air pollution, comes from renewable sources, is biodegradable and is safer for the environment. Producing biodiesel fuels can help create local economic revitalization and local environmental benefits.
Biodiesel is designed for complete compatibility with petroleum diesel and can be blended in any ratio, from additive levels to 100% biodiesel. In the United States today, biodiesel is typically produced from soybean or rapeseed oil or can be reprocessed from waste cooking oils or animal fats such as waste fish oil. Because it is made of these easily obtainable plant-based materials, it is a completely renewable fuel source.
The global leader for biodiesel production is the EU, using mainly rapeseed, but the USA, Brazil and Argentina are rapidly developing capacity based on soya. The third major plant oil used for this fuel is palm oil, originating mainly in Indonesia and Malaysia although this remains overwhelmingly a food crop. Within South America Colombian palm oil production is expanding rapidly with the possibility of this country becoming an important regional supplier. Alternative plant oil sources, such as Jatropha, are being developed in some countries, but biodiesel production will remain dependent on the ‘big three’ for the foreseeable future.
In Europe the main producers are Italy, France, Spain, Germany, Belgium and Austria. This interest drove the farmers to set aside land for non-food crops such as oilseed rape and sunflowers.
Along with its bioethanol production, Brazil is capitalising on soybean supplies to expand into biodiesel. Throughout the world, the main drivers for biofuel today are government rules mandating increased biodiesel and ethanol content in diesel and gasoline, respectively.
In 2007 the EU mandated that 20% of total energy content of petrol and diesel needs to come from renewable fuels. Thailand is aiming for a 10% renewable mix in the next years; India 20% by 2020.
Biodiesel also includes synthetic diesel fuel made through gasification or some other approach. The biodiesel process involves well established technologies that are not likely to change significantly in the future, but efficiency can be improved by large scale production. There are some useful by products such as glycerine, a valuable chemical used for making many types of cosmetic, medicines and foods.
Sugar alcohol is better than corn alcohol, but palm oil is even better. It is relatively high energy efficiency per unit volume makes it a good biodiesel fuel. Trucks can run entirely on palm oil. A large scale effort is under way to convert lands in Indonesia to palm oil plantation agriculture, with plans to double current production in a few years.
This is likely to be constrained by environmental concerns outside Indonesia against the destruction of mangrove and other rainforest resources necessary to make way for palm oil based biodiesel production.
The global market for biodiesel is expected to increase in the next ten years. Europe currently represents 80% of global consumption and production, but the US is now catching up with a faster rate in production than Europe. Brazil is expected to surpass US and European biodiesel production by 2015. Europe, Brazil, China and India each have targets to replace 5% to 20% of total diesel with biodiesel. If governments continued to invest more in R&D on biofuel exploitation, it would be possible to reach the targets sooner. But, as noted, the effort has a downside. The needed rainforest destruction (by burning) will partly cancel biodiesel advantage supplied by palm oil, moreover such conversion will threaten already endangered species.
Biodiesel from oil crops and bioethanol from sugarcane or corn are being produced in increasing amounts as renewable biofuels, but their production in large quantities is not sustainable and there is technical challenge for commercial production.
while doing projects on alternative fuels we should take some basic consideration Food Vs Fuel, its properties and storage of bio-diesel
Alabama Gets First-In-World Carbon-Negative Algae Biofuel
http://cleantechnica.com/2014/08/20/alabama-gets-first-world-carbon-negative-algae-biofuel/
Glycerol, a byproduct of biodiesel production is an emerging biofuel. Although, the energy density of glycerol per kg is moderate, it has a high volumetric energy density and the McNeil combustion cycle allows it to be combusted for cogeneration at high efficiencies and with very low emissions. Aquafuel has established the specification of glycerol from biodiesel manufacture (for CHP combustion to electricity), from trials of several thousand hours using adapted 2, 4 and 12 cylinder engine .
Experimental “green” power plant for University of Greenwich at Medway in €4 million European project - http://www2.gre.ac.uk/about/news/articles/2012/a2365-pat-harvey
In addition to what I have said before, perhaps this information could be useful:
Based on the research results achieved so far it can be concluded, that future research should especially focus on the following issues, which are crucial to enhance the reliability and accuracy of biomass energy potential assessments:
• Experiences with (re)cultivation and knowledge of degraded and marginal soils (that represent a wide diversity of settings) are limited. More research is required to evaluate the severity and type of soil degradation, because at this moment only coarse resolution data-sets are available. Research and demonstration activities required to understand the economic and practical feasibility of using degraded/marginal land is needed;
• Data on the present use of degraded and marginal soils are typically not included in statistics. Such data can be derived by comparing maps of degraded areas with data on land use or vegetation cover. A limiting factor is that the resolution of data on soil degradation is much lower than of the data on land use or vegetation cover, which make it problematic to determine the current use of degraded areas. Data on marginal areas are usually also not readily available. However, crop growth models that use data on soil and climate in combination with data on crop management can provide insight into the areas marginal lands;
• Experiences with new energy crops are limited to a few experimental field trials, so additional research is required to improve estimates of future yields. Crucial thereby is the crop management system and the availability of water, which can be evaluated using crop growth models in combination with expert judgement. Furthermore, yields on degraded and marginal soils are also highly uncertain, due to a lack of experience;
• The efficiency of agricultural production systems is a crucial parameter for the availability of land for energy crop production. It is important that further insight is gained into the dynamics of increases in the efficiency of the agricultural production systems and the feasibility of such developments;
• The production of animal products is very land intensive because of the losses when converting feed crops into animal products and because of the large pasture areas that are involved. Further research is required to investigate the turnover of biomass in the animal food sector. Typically only statistics on the amount of feed crops and hectares of pasture land are available, but data on the total biomass throughput and land use dynamics are scarce, especially in relation to estimations of the feasibility of increases in the efficiency of the animal production system; and
• The future costs of energy crop production are highly uncertain due to the uncertain changes in the costs of land, labor, fuel and other inputs, but also due to the uncertainties when estimating crop yields. Last, but certainly not least, the costs of compliance with sustainability criteria are typically not investigated; The impact of technical developments and technical learning. Both aspects can be crucial for the overall performance, but data is scarce, except for some bio-energy systems, and therefore deserve further attention.
Other issues that are considering important for the assessment of the potential in the use of biomass for the generation of electricity are the following:
• Differences in national forest inventory procedures cause inconsistencies in forest statistics within the EU, e.g., the minimal countable diameter of trees varies between countries and thus leads to uncertainties in estimates of growing stock and the net annual increment. Without any doubt, harmonization of the national forest inventories within the EU will improve the potential assessment in the future use of biomass for the generation of electricity;
• An important uncertainty is the quality of data about degraded and low productive soils. The estimation of current and especially future yields of energy crops is also typically a source of uncertainty and is, therefore, a key target for future research. The efficiency of the animal production systems and the productivity of pastures is a key target for future research too, considering the large areas that are needed for the production of animal products;
• The development of the population distribution should be taken into consideration, i.e., trends in population migration. If necessary, the connection rates for waste-water treatment should be adapted to the demographic development. For instance, in remote areas with a clear migration trend into cities, the population will probably only gradually connected to waste-water treatment or not at all. Moreover, future industry building activities should be taken into account,
• The agricultural sector is affected by several factors. The agricultural production could be influenced by market issues, the diet of the population, the land use change, and climatic conditions (e.g., precipitation). As a result, the biomass potential of produced residues could be changed. Additionally, as the area used for energy crops increases, the cereal and maize crop areas are reduced by an equivalent area. In many biomass resource assessments, sustainable harvest levels are based on common, but arbitrary primary residue harvest levels (often 25 % or 30 % of total residues available). These harvest levels do not seem to be based on any research, but rather on a feeling that this should be on the safe side. The issue is, however, rather complex because sustainable harvest levels depend on the type of soil, alternative uses of the residues (especially animal feed), slope of the land, etc. Further research is needed to understand what sustainable harvest levels could be, in order to support agrobiodiversity and soil quality and ultimately, to present sustainable availability of (primary) agricultural residues,
• The agricultural sector is influenced by several factors. The market of agricultural products, the availability of resources (e.g., water, nutrients, among others), productivity issues, diet of population, and modification of varieties. Future plant breeding for increment of cereals’ yields will not necessarily increase the residues production, since ongoing research focuses on less straw per tonne of grain produced. This issue must be taken into account in future biomass resource assessments,
• Since the definition of municipal waste and surveying methods used vary from country to country, comparability of data is limited. However, most uncertainty is related to the determination of the organic content and the energy value of the wastes. Information on organic content is difficult to find and the use of average values can lead to substantial deviation between countries. In many countries there is uncertainty about the organic content of not separately collected municipal waste. Efforts should be made to make existing waste composition analyzes available in an internationally accepted format. In case these analyzes are not available at all, they should be carried out using relevant surveying methods;
• The energy potential of landfill gas depends on the historic and current amounts of biodegradable waste sent to landfill. Even if no new biodegradable waste would be land-filled, landfill gas production would continue for several years;
• The development in population distribution will play an important role as it influences the sewage sludge catchment areas. The drying of sewage sludge will be economically viable and thus realizable only if there is a rather high population density in the catchment area. Furthermore, future plans for building plants that are potential waste heat sources as well as the alternative use options for this heat will influence the potential;
• The future potential of construction and demolition wood mainly depends on the population growth, the activities in the construction and demolition sector as well as on architectural trends; more wood might be used for a certain period of time, which will become waste long after;
• The amounts of waste generated per capita differ greatly between countries and over time, mirroring differences and changes in structure and technology used within the building and construction sector, but also differences regarding what has been categorized as construction and demolition waste. Since there is no central data collection on this waste category neither on national nor on European level, the exact composition of demolition and construction waste and therefore the potential of construction and demolition wood is not clear. Construction and demolition wood accounts for a significant energy potential which does not cause any competitions with other use options. Therefore, more detailed and exact data collection should be aimed for at European level in order to tap the full potential of this waste category ;
• The future potential of sewage gas and sludge depends among others on the amount of treated urban waste water and thus on the development of the number of households and on the connection rate of households to sewage treatment. Although many of the European countries have reached the (economically possible) maximum connection rate, many countries still have possibilities to increase it. For industrial waste-water treatment, the future potential depends on future building activities. When considering to change the connection rate, it has to be taken into account that the above mentioned sewage sludge potential already includes current connection rates. Therefore, the 100% sewage production has to be extrapolated first based on the current amount of sludge and the current connection rate. After that, the connection rate can be adapted to the respective scenario. For the amount of sludge produced per capita, the total amount of sewage sludge has to be divided by the population size. Regarding the further use of sewage sludge, there are different options. Currently, part of the sludge is disposed of in landfills or used in agriculture and therefore is no longer available for energy production via combustion. Sludge that is disposed of in landfills contributes to the production of landfill gas. In the future, probably less sewage sludge will be disposed of in landfills as the landfill directive (1999/31/EC 1999) aims at reducing the disposal of biodegradable waste by 35 % until 2016. The directive has led to the implementation of rather strict regulations in many EU member states reducing the amount of biodegradable waste in landfills. The use of sewage sludge in agriculture is strongly promoted on European level and the threshold limits in the sewage sludge directive (86/278/EEC 1986) are set rather loosely. However, in different European countries there are opposing trends and the use of sewage sludge in agriculture is inhibited more and more by restrictive regulations. Therefore, for future scenarios, the regulations in the EU member states need to be taken into account. Whereas in some countries, it is likely that the whole amount of sewage sludge will have to be combusted, in other States large quantities will be applied to the fields.
In addition to valuable comment of others, sustainable and economic production of biodiesel is very important. Presently tax incentives by government is a key driver to production of biodiesel which may not be withdrawn. The two important issues in economic production of biodiesel are cost of feedstock and production. The food vs fuel debate is where the production from consumable oil seed may not be sustainable. Therefore, more research is needed for the commercial production of biofuel from non food source. Another area that will determine the future of biodiesel is improvement on available technology that will be cost effective and environmental friendly. This improvement should be taken to commercial production stage because at the moment most are at the laboratory stage. Currently at Newcastle University research is on going on improving the technology as well as adding value to the by-product of the production process.
Hello, a review article that can contribute to clarify some topics of the raised question: "Technological challenges for the production of biodiesel in arid lands".
Article Technological challenges for the production of biodiesel in arid lands
Biodiesel is likely to have an ever exapnding role in liquid fuel procurement practices. Pressure both in terms of restricted natural resources, political disturbances and energy independence will keep research in this field pertinent. Also, environmental advantages are part of the motivation as well, however the difference between the perceived and actual benefits have not quite aligned completely. The first generation biofuels such as corn and soy ethanol are particularly telling. For instance, biofuel from corn requires large amounts of freshwater and their upstream impacts from harvesting and processing can sometimes increase the total life cycle impacts of the fuel (depending on many different assumptions and parameters). There are also legitimate concerns over food versus fuel for these first generation fuels.
To cut to the chase, third generation biofuels have significant potential in the future, particularly algal fuels. Algae has a larger capacity per area of land to produce oil and has recently been shown to grow in saltwater and or wastewater, which has obvious potential benefits. Costs remain high for this technology now, but one can assume this will improve over time. Again however, the total life cycle impacts should be studied to understand what the upstream impacts from growing, harvesting, extracting and converting the oil will be compared to traditional fuels. It is my opinion that this should be included in the development of any biofuel choice going forward so some of the same mistakes from first generation fuels aren't repeated.
i agree with excellent answer by Dr. Lala Behari Sukla, in my opinion, bio hydrogen from algae, other plant will be the fourth generation bio fuel.
South Australia based Muradel Pty Ltd produces drop- in fuel from halophytic microalgae. Its trademark process produces “green crude” which upon fractionation yields drop-in substitutes of fossil fuels. The company was founded in Dec 2010 as a joint venture between the Murdoch University, Adelaide Research and Innovation Pty Ltd and SQC Pty Ltd. - See more at: http://biofueluptodate.com/fuel-from-halophytic-microalgae/#sthash.ueTExaA2.dpuf
So you suggest that the future of biodiesel production lays in the development of advanced biodiesel fuels (thus reducing the problem of the glycerol glut)?
The future of Biodiesel depends on two main factors:
1. Feedstock availability
The biodiesel success is based on the availability of fats and oils with properties nearby Diesel fuel. Vegetable oil producing technologies are available since thousands of years and benefit from technological learning. This has made it easy to develop cost-effective biodiesel technologies.
UFO and other fats in waste are the feedstock of choice for sustainable 1st gen Biodiesel. The quantities are limited – maybe less than 10 % of oils and fats for human nutrition
Coupled production of vegetable oil for food, protein feed and feedstock for industry&energy was, is and could be a perfect solution for a biobased economy. To reach such synergies strong policies must be developed and implemented.
A long term strategy (biofuels after 2050) can only be based on “high yield per hectare”. As oils yields are low compared to biomass yields of annual lignocellulosic plants Biodiesel will be replaced by such plants. Algae biomass seems to be promising but the way to Algal biofuel is not only very long but also very risky.
2. Fuel market
Biodiesel is very similar but not the same as fossil Diesel. Blending was the method of choice for the Biodiesel implementation. With 5-7 % the blend wall seems to be reached.
There are a lot of opportunities for conventional Biodiesel on the whole globe for the next decade but future high volume biobased transport fuel must be developed hand in hand with the development of a sustainable transport system.
These days high emphasis is laid on “Drop in Biofuels”, eg for BioJetFuels; today NextBtL is NUMBER ONE on this market but the barriers for all Drop in Biofuels are high.
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