Analysis of the development status of biofuels at home and abroad and its impact on related industries (2)

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Analysis of the development status of biofuels at home and abroad and its impact on related industries (2) 2008-01-15 1.3 Countries such as Malaysia have great potential to develop biodiesel. Canada is the first in the world to mandate that the biodiesel content in its diesel and heating oil shall not be less than 2% by 2012, thereby reducing annual greenhouse gas emissions by 4 million tons. Therefore, Canadian biodiesel production will develop rapidly. Japan's biodiesel industry has reached a scale of 400,000 t/a. The main raw material is waste cooking oil, and the scale of a single unit is small. South Korea has introduced German technology and can produce approximately 200,000 t/a biodiesel. other * * It is also adapting to local conditions and utilizing the country's superior raw materials to develop the biodiesel industry (see Table 3). Malaysia is rich in palm oil, and the biodiesel project approved in 2006 will increase production capacity by more than 3 million tons/a. Malaysia * * Approvals have been suspended due to concerns about insufficient palm oil supply. It is expected that Malaysia's biodiesel production capacity will reach 1.1 million L/a in 2007 and 3.3 million t/a in 2010, which is the same as India's 2010 target scale. Malaysia plans to become the world's largest biodiesel producer and prepares to achieve a 10% share of the international market. Thailand will vigorously develop the biodiesel industry using palm oil produced in Malaysia and Indonesia as raw materials. The target is 1.3 million t/a in 2010 and 2.55 million t/a in 2012. Indonesia's biodiesel production capacity will also grow rapidly, and is expected to increase from 180,000 t/a in 2006 to 750,000 t/a in 2007 and 1.2 million t/a in 2008. Obviously, Southeast Asia and South Asia such as Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, and India * * Biodiesel has great potential for development. Lurgi's large orders also reflect the rapid development of the global biodiesel industry. In October 2006, the company had 31 biodiesel units under construction worldwide (>4.2 million t/a), including 7 units in Argentina, Malaysia, France and Indonesia (each with 100,000-200,000 t/a). Argentina is the world's largest exporter of soybean oil and the third largest producer and exporter of oil crops. Spain's Repsol Company's new biodiesel plant in the country was put into operation in May 2007. Argentina's biodiesel industry is attractive to foreign investment due to its abundant raw materials and low prices. To sum up, high oil prices are promoting the development of the biofuel industry. Biodiesel is developing faster than bioethanol in Europe, Brazil and the United States are focusing on the development of bioethanol, Southeast Asia and South Asia are * * Biodiesel has great potential for development. The author estimates that global biodiesel production capacity will increase from approximately 6 million t/a in 2005 (expert assessment value) to >14.5 million t/a by the end of 2007, and will exceed 36.7 million t/a in 2012 (see Table 4). Note: SRI Consulting's assessment is more optimistic. The company predicts that global biodiesel demand will grow from 6.9 million tons in 2006 to 44.8 million tons in 2010. 1.4 The development momentum of biofuels in my country is strong. my country has four designated bioethanol production enterprises in Jilin, Henan, and Heilongjiang. They mainly use aged grains to produce fuel ethanol. By the end of 2005, the production capacity reached 1.32 million t/a (output 1.02 million t). These enterprises are facing marketization. Starting from 2006, * * The subsidy will be changed to 1,373 yuan/t and will be canceled by the end of 2008. At present, domestic manufacturers have invested tens of billions of yuan in the bioethanol industry. ； Some of these manufacturers are also preparing to use ethanol to produce ethylene and ethylene glycol. For example, BBCA Biochemical Company has built a 20,000 t/a ethylene glycol unit in Bengbu, Anhui. Experts predict that my country's bioethanol production capacity will increase by 4.7 million t/a before 2010, and the total scale will exceed 6 million t/a. Driven by the U.S. market, my country's fuel ethanol production exceeded 1.6 million tons in 2006, and exports surged from almost zero in 2005 to more than 500,000 tons. my country has built several biodiesel plants, with a total output of about 50,000 tons in 2005 and more than 100,000 tons in 2006. * * The Development and Reform Commission has made arrangements for the development of my country's biofuel industry. From 2006 to 2010, technology industrialization will be mainly implemented, with major development after 2015, and biofuels will account for 15% of total transportation fuel consumption in 2020. Experts therefore predict that my country's annual biodiesel output, after exceeding 1 million tons in 2010, will further increase to 9 million tons or even more in 2020. Similar to the development of the bioethanol industry, private capital and foreign businessmen have also begun to enter my country's biodiesel industry. * * There are close to 100 small biodiesel projects. Only the projects known to the author will have a biodiesel production capacity of at least 1.555 million t/a in 2006-2007. ； It will further increase to 6.7 million t/a in 2011 (see Table 5). It can be seen from Table 5 that my country's biofuel industry is developing rapidly. 2 The linkage of the development of the biodiesel industry affects other industries, the caustic soda and hydrochloric acid industry 2.1 The mainstream process of caustic soda biodiesel in Europe and the United States is the Lurgi company's process, which uses a 25% or 30% methanol solution of sodium methoxide as a catalyst to exchange oil and methanol ester under anhydrous conditions to produce biodiesel with up to standard quality and co-produce medical grade glycerol. This method has fewer side reactions and the product is easy to separate and refine. This process uses sodium methoxide as a catalyst. Since the production of 1 t of 31% methanol solution of sodium methoxide requires the consumption of approximately 210kg of 98% solid caustic soda, biodiesel production is a downstream industry of caustic soda. Therefore, Degussa Company built a continuous production device near Cologne, Germany, to manufacture 30% methanol solution of sodium methoxide. In order to ensure smooth export to the United States, the company rented a long-term storage and transportation facility in Houston, Texas, in early 2006 to store this highly efficient catalyst. The latest reports indicate that in order to meet the rapidly increasing demand for biodiesel catalysts in the United States, Canada and Mexico, Degussa has begun construction of a 60,000 t/a sodium methoxide unit at its Mobile plant in Alabama, which is scheduled to be put into operation in the second half of 2008. In recent years, several new biodiesel processes that do not use caustic soda have emerged. For example, the French Petroleum Institute has developed a spinel-structured solid catalyst and is building a 160,000 t/a biodiesel plant using this catalyst. Sumitomo Corporation successfully developed a supercritical methanol transesterification process that does not use a catalyst, and a 10,000 t/a biodiesel demonstration unit was completed in 2006. This new catalyst-free technology requires the transesterification reaction to be carried out at 240°C and higher pressure. Since no alkali is used, saponification is avoided, glycerol is easily recovered, and the yield is high. It is said that the production cost is 6% lower than traditional methods. However, its equipment requirements are high. Using lipase to catalyze the transesterification of vegetable oil and methanol to produce biodiesel and co-produce glycerin is also a promising process. However, this process requires the use of organic solvents. Because when the content of methanol in the reaction system reaches a certain value, lipase will be inactivated, and the price of lipase is relatively high. India * * The chemical engineering laboratory is developing biodiesel production technology that uses bimetallic salt catalysts to replace caustic soda and a two-step process that converts by-product glycosides into diglycerides and triethers. Glyceryl ethers can be added to diesel fuel as oxidants to reduce emissions. A pilot plant is planned to be built in India. In addition, oil refineries have begun to jointly produce automobile fuel with meat processing plants. Starting from the fourth quarter of 2007, an Irish refinery will use pyrolysis to simultaneously process fat meat and petroleum hydrocarbons to produce diesel. In the next few years, the production scale of the refinery will reach 660,000 t/a. There are also some oil companies (including Petrobras and BP) who are studying the use of hydrogenation catalysts to catalytically hydrogenate a mixture of vegetable oil or animal fat and mineral oil into diesel (biodiesel mass fraction is about 5%). Hydrogenated biodiesel does not contain sulfur, has low aromatic content, high cetane number, and is easy to ignite. There has been a recent breakthrough in this method. UOP and Eni have collaborated to develop a new process that can catalytically hydrogenate vegetable oil into biodiesel. The cetane number of the product is as high as 80 (petroleum diesel is 40-60), which can directly replace petroleum diesel or be mixed with it. ； It is planned to build the first industrial unit in Livorno, Italy (with a production capacity of approximately 350,000 t/a) and put it into operation in 2009. However, the current mainstream biodiesel process still requires the use of sodium methoxide, and caustic soda is also consumed for neutralization and refining of vegetable oil raw materials. Such mainstream processes are also improving. In order to expand the source of raw materials for biodiesel production, the US company SSBE has developed a new extraction process to extract crude grain oil during the grain powdering process in fuel ethanol production without affecting bioethanol production. The refined grain oil is used to produce biodiesel, and a 176,000 t/a grain oil-to-biodiesel plant is under construction. A U.S. Department of Agriculture research institute is also considering producing biodiesel from waste by-products of bioethanol production. Since the annual output of bioethanol in the United States is as high as 15.14 million tons, about 760,000 tons of biodiesel can be produced from by-product residues. The agency is also developing a new process that allows soy flour to react directly with sodium methoxide, eliminating the need to pre-extract soy oil from the soy flour with hexane. In order to prevent the water content of soybean flour from increasing the methanol consumption, 10% of the water in the soybean flour can be removed in advance to reduce costs. A similar process developed by Huazhong Agricultural University uses a special solvent to directly extract oil from rapeseed oil to produce biodiesel. It also does not require pre-pressing of oil. This method co-produces concentrated protein. In January 2007, it jointly built a 2000t/a biodiesel production line with Tianmen Oil Processing Enterprise. In order to improve the reaction efficiency, the process developed by the University of Toronto in Canada uses a co-solvent to dissolve methanol and oil into one phase. ； A 50,000 t/a biodiesel plant is already under construction using this new process. The United States is developing an environmentally friendly biodiesel intermittent production process (300-450L per batch). In addition to using local waste oil as raw material, it also uses a heating system that uses solar energy to heat vegetable oil, a continuous filtration and recycling system for washing water, excess methanol recovery and by-product glycerin refining, all of which do not use electricity. Global biodiesel production in 2005 was only 3.24 million tons. The author predicts that it will exceed 13 million tons in 2008 and may exceed 35 million tons in 2012. Such an astonishing development rate is mainly driven by the requirements of countries around the world to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Experts from Frost & Sullivan predict that biodiesel use in Brazil, Europe, China and India may account for 20% of their respective total transportation diesel use in 2020. Due to the mainstream production process of biodiesel, at least 2% of the output of sodium methoxide catalyst will be consumed ； It is estimated that in the next few years, the global annual production of 30 million tons of biodiesel will consume more than 600,000 tons of sodium methoxide and more than 400,000 tons of caustic soda (excluding caustic soda for neutralization of vegetable oil raw materials). Source of information: China Chemical Information Network 2008-01-09 Information Category: Biomass and unconventional oil and gas resources