BioMCN

Climate change is impacting our daily lives and every aspect of doing business on a global scale. CO2 emissions need to be reduced drastically.

BioMCN aims to make an important and undeniable contribution to achieving these reduction targets by offering bio-methanol, which enables our customers to extend their range of sustainable and environmentally friendly products. Our technology reduces energy dependency and increases security of supply, while avoiding negative socio-economic effects, especially those affecting food production and land use.

Driven by innovation and a commitment to sustainability, we have developed an innovative large-scale industrial process which enables us to convert crude glycerine into bio-methanol.

Crude glycerine is generated as a by-product during the manufacturing process of biodiesel. As the production of biodiesel continues to grow, the amount of available crude glycerine increases too. So much so, that existing applications can no longer cope with these ever larger amounts.

Today the energy potential of crude glycerine is almost entirely wasted. By converting crude glycerine into bio-methanol, its energy content can be converted into a variety of transportation fuels, thus enabling significant reductions in CO2 emissions in the area of seventy percent (70%). Bio-methanol offers petrochemical companies additional attractive solutions in their quest for more sustainable biofuels that best meet the targets set in the EU Renewable Energy Directive.

The product

Making methanol from organic material is, in itself, nothing new. Its origins go as far back as the ancient Egyptians, who obtained methanol from the pyrolysis of wood (wood alcohol). Nowadays, we use an innovative technology to convert glycerine into high quality bio-methanol. Our bio-methanol is chemically identical to regular methanol and meets or even exceeds internationally accepted specifications.

Bio-methanol is an extremely versatile product that can either be used as a fuel in its own right, or as a chemical building block for a range of future-oriented and environmentally friendly fuels, e.g.:

• gasoline blends, giving lower CO2 emissions and more flexibility in the use of alcohols in internal combustion engines;
• bio-MTBE, replacing fossil MTBE in gasoline blends;
• bio-DME, a very low emission diesel alternative;
• bio-hydrogen, suitable for internal combustion engines as well as fuel cells;
• bio-diesel, thus improving CO2 well to wheel performance; and,
• synthetic (bio)fuels, with similar energy performance as their fossil gasoline and diesel counterparts.

Bio-methanol is also used for a variety of non-fuel applications including plastics and paints.

The process

Regular methanol is made from fossil resources like natural gas or coal gasification. Bio-methanol on the other hand is made entirely from renewable resources, like crude glycerine from biodiesel plants.

Biodiesel is made through a transesterification reaction of vegetable oils or animal fat and methanol. Besides biodiesel the process also produces approximately 10% crude glycerine as a by-product. The crude glycerine from biodiesel plants is transported to our plant. It is then purified, evaporated and cracked to obtain bio-syngas (synthesis gas), which is used to synthesise bio-methanol. Next, the bio-methanol is distilled and stored before shipment to customers.

Guarantee of Origin

BioMCN is one of the founding members of biofuelGO, an initiative established to implement a pan-European system to certify sustainability information of a range of biofuels including biodiesel and ethanol as well; GO stands for Guarantee of Origin. It provides proof that biofuels are made from renewable resources, while providing additional information about sustainability and CO2 emission reduction. Because bio-methanol is made from biomass, it will be supplied with a green certificate which declares the origin of the renewable resources.

The future

BioMCN acquired two existing methanol plants in the Netherlands, which traditionally operate on natural gas. The total capacity of the two plants combined is approximately one million tonnes.

In March 2008 the pilot plant (20 kton) was started up successfully. Construction has also started to fully convert both production lines from natural gas to bio-gas. The transition will be performed in stages during the coming years, changing over from natural gas to bio-syngas in steps of 200 kton at a time. The first large unit is scheduled to be operational by March 2009.

Besides crude glycerine, we are also exploring the possibilities to use other organic materials like wood, algae and other organic by-products as alternative feedstock to replace natural gas.

Simultaneously, we are investigating the feasibility to convert CO2 into renewable methanol. First by using CO2 emissions from industrial partners as feedstock, and at a later stage by capturing CO2 from the atmosphere. With CO2 being available anywhere in the world, and its use having many socio-economic benefits, the advantages of converting CO2 back to fuel are obvious.

W: www.biomcn.eu