The evolution continues
Biodiesel is the first step towards a power industry less dependent on crude oil

Whilst the concept of bio-refineries using renewable raw materials and biomass is still more of a vision than a reality in the chemistry world, nevertheless serious money is being made elsewhere using cereals, rapeseed and other crops. At the moment there is a gold-digging mood among the large plant engineers: driven by EU regulations, the demand for biodiesel plants is greater than ever before. The consequence: new plants are springing up like there’s no tomorrow.

The rapeseed glows golden in the field under the sun, the plants blow gently in the breeze, bees hover around the blossom: the romantic picture almost makes you forget that this is a cut-throat business. The fact is biogasoline made from renewable raw materials has long stopped being an idea associated with brooding long-haired alternative types and become the banner of a technical revolution currently bringing plant engineering considerable growth.

Whether it is biodiesel made from rapeseed oil, bioethanol made from sugar beet and sugar cane or synthetic gasoline made from biomass or maize starch-based plastics, it is not only plant engineers and supplier companies who start rubbing their hands with glee in raptures at the prospects for growth offered by the alternative raw materials. Even unbendable chemicals directors come over all philosophical on this issue: “The conversion from fossil to renewable raw materials is one of the greatest challenges facing us over the next 50 years,” acknowledged Degussa research director Dr. Alfred Oberholz recently at a conference in Marl/Germany, setting out the vision of a bio-refinery which takes in renewable raw materials and churns out chemical feedstock at the end of the day. The forerunner, not entirely of its own volition, is the fuel industry. Biodiesel, the first step in the fuel revolution towards a fuel supply that is no longer dependent on crude oil, currently accounts for 5% of all diesel sales, and rising. For the EU is now applying not inconsiderable pressure with legislation. One directive stipulates that by 2010 around 6% of diesel in fuel pumps is to be made from renewable raw materials. By 2015, even 10% of fuel demand is to be covered by fuels from alternative sources such as biodiesel, bioethanol or biogas, and this figure is to increase to 20% by 2020. The consequence of the directive in Germany is the drive towards mixing: from January, gasoline must contain 2% bioethanol and diesel is to be enriched with 4.4% biodiesel. Experts estimate that for this reason alone demand in the EU will rise to seven billion tons by 2010.
Spurred on by such prospects of growth and the subsidization policies of the individual countries, biodiesel plants are springing up as never before: “We built the first biodiesel plant in Slovakia in 2001, but the boom really got going three years ago,” reminisces Klaus-Peter Eickhoff, Head of Oils and Fats Processing at Westfalia Separator. Machine builders can hardly keep up with the demand for separators at the moment, and the plants are getting increasingly larger. “To begin with, the plant size was still only 100 tons per day; now we are already talking about plant sizes of 800 tons a day.”
The process engineers at Westfalia were exploring the development and construction of biodiesel plants at a time when the alternative fuel was still a real niche market and it was just a few farmers filling their tractors with rapeseed methyl ester. “We started the development in 1991. In 1992 we signed a license agreement with Ölmühle Leer Connemann, which is now part of the American ADM Group and thus secured us the rights to what is referred to as the CD-Process/Connemann-ADM,” explains Eickhoff.
The CD-Process developed by engineer Dr. Joosten Connemann was the first large-scale process for producing biodiesel at the beginning of the 1990s and then used, as it still does today, reaction columns, separators, driers and rectificators, i.e. the processing equipment that is standard in chemical plant engineering. At the heart of the plant is the separating technology. No coincidence, therefore, that Westfalia as a separator specialist jumped on the bandwagon early and supplied the pilot plant built in 1991.
Germany is not only the forerunner in process engineering and the largest market; it is also currently the world-leader in terms of production capacities: 1.9 million liters, more than half of the total global production, comes from Germany, as Worldwatch has just revealed in its latest study. Industrial chemistry is also benefiting indirectly from the biodiesel boom as well as the plant engineers, as catalysts are of course required to convert the rapeseed oil into biodiesel and glycerin. The biggest manufacturers worldwide are Degussa and BASF. Degussa manufactures alcoholate catalysts which increase the biodiesel yield by 2–5% and allow a water-free process.
Manufacturing biodiesel: simple recipe
To the layperson, the recipe for manufacturing biodiesel might seem extremely simple at first glance: rapeseed oil and methanol are heated with sodium hydroxide solution, during which process the glycerin in the rapeseed oil, controlled by the catalyst, changes place with the methanol. Rapeseed methyl ester and glycerin are thus produced, a reversal mastered by any chemistry student in their first term with little difficulty, as the whole process takes place at room temperature and under normal pressure. However, as is so often the case, the devil is in the detail. In hardly any other sector is the process so closely dependent on the plant equipment and the raw material basis available as in the manufacture of fuel from rapeseed and other crops. “The raw materials are natural products whose exact properties are impossible to specify and which may be subject to significant fluctuations in quality,” explains Jörg-E. Junge, Managing Director of BCT Junge Engineering. This is particularly true of the proportions of free fatty acids and phospholipids, which must not be too high. Junge has more than ten years’ experience of the business and provides all manner of consultancy and engineering services relating to the manufacture of biodiesel and glycerin. From experience, he therefore knows that plant concepts are not transferable as a matter of course and that each of the three most common processes has its strengths and weaknesses.
The CD-Process licensed by Wesfalia may be costly in terms of equipment, but it does allow larger production plants. “The CD-Process becomes of interest for annual production volumes upwards of 100,000 tons. At 200,000 to 300,000 tons the advantages of centrifuge technology are maximized,” explains Eickhoff. Processes using settling tanks quickly reach their limits of process technology on such scales—they simply become too big. The main point about the continuous process is that short periods of time in the reaction columns for the reversal in conjunction with the centrifuges, both for the separation of the glycerin and the washing of the biodiesel, ensure a small production volume in the plant as a whole and continuous, fully automatic operation. By recovering the water-free but still alkaline raw glycerin from the reversal, the pretreatment of the raw oils, i.e. their neutralization, can be incorporated into the process. The product: pure methyl ester that is well within the European biodiesel standard and “kosher” technical glycerin.
High-quality pharmaceutical-grade glycerin can also be produced using the two-stage Lurgi process. The basic equipment for this is two reactors designed as mixer/settler, the phase separators for which are installed downstream. High turnovers can be achieved after a relatively short period of time through intensive mixing of the reaction partners. The methyl ester produced is washed and dried and thus becomes an end product. The glycerin phase is processed with water containing methanol and turned into pharmaceutical-grade glycerin.
Medium-sized companies dominating the scene
The plant engineering German company Lurgi is one of the old bulls on the biodiesel market at the moment. 60–70% of the world’s production capacity is originates from this company which is still a subsidiary of the GEA Group; in the first six months of the year alone the Group booked three orders with a total volume of s138 million. For Lurgi boss Klaus Moll, the focus on biofuels is therefore an important pillar in which he has great hopes of high earnings. The plant engineering company is also involved in the swissbased company Biopetrol Industries. CEO Klaus Henschel has ambitious goals. By 2007 he hopes to achieve a total annual capacity of 750,000 tons of biodiesel and 90,000 tons of pharmaceutical-grade glycerin from three production sites and thus be among the five largest biodiesel manufacturers in Europe. His predecessor has just signed the contract for a third plant in Rotterdam/Netherlands, which is due to commence operation in summer 2007 and is expected to produce 400,000 tons of biodiesel and 60,000 tons of pharmaceutical-grade glycerin a year. As a major plant engineering company with its own technology, however, Lurgi is an exception in the biodiesel business. The main players on the market are medium-sized companies with their own process development, such as Cimbria Sket from Magdeburg/ Germany or AT Agrar-Technik from Schleidheim/Germany. Together with Uhde as a general contractor, AT is building four plants in Germany this year with a total annual capacity of 800,000 tons, where Campa is building the largest biodiesel plant in southern Germany at 200,000 tons. The Bavarians are pushing the construction of biodiesel plants particularly hard at the moment: the Minister for Economic Affairs for Bavaria, Mr. Miller, is even planning an expansion of capacity to approximately 600,000 tons.
However, eastern Germany currently has the edge in the race for the position of ideal site. 70% of biofuels produced in Germany come from Saxony-Anhalt. There are good reasons for this: there are not only vast areas of land in the east, waiting for rapeseed to be grown on them; there are also lucrative subsidies for investors. Only recently, the Würzburg-based company Neckermann Renewables was delighted to receive a favorable decision to subsidize a complete plant in Piesteritz/Germany costing s64 million which can do everything from receiving the seed to extracting the diesel. The plant near Wittenberg/Germany is expected to provide around 200,000 tons of biodiesel and 20,000 tons of pharmaceutical-grade glycerin annually from as early as December.
However, the biodiesel business is not without its problems, particularly for medium-sized companies with a thin capital base. “It seems that the market is developing more slowly than capacity.” This is the somber conclusion of Peter Christian Berger, author of a study produced under the aegis of the Austrian “Institute for Technology and Sustainable Product Management”. Although the banks are perfectly willing to provide funds—witness the example of Piesteritz, where the plant is financed by the austrianbased Hydro Group Alpe Adria—the entire industry is dependent on subsidies and is therefore looking nervously at Berlin, where new plans to tax biodiesel are always in the offing. Biopetrol Industries discovered recently just how sensitive the market is to the discussions concerning taxation: in May the quarterly report posted figures that were on budget, but within just one month the CEO resigned and Biopetrol issued a profit warning. It was not for nothing that Stefan Schreiber, Head of German Biodiesel Production at Cargill, warned of the need for “reliable framework conditions” at the laying of the foundation stone for a new s25-million biodiesel plant in the Höchst industrial park, otherwise it would, as he pointed out, be difficult to make long-term investment decisions.
Another sticking point is that nearly all known processes use rapeseed oil as the base material for the necessary triglycerides. One reason for this is that the German biodiesel standard is based on rapeseed methyl ester and therefore only biodiesel made from rapeseed oil may be added. Due to this requirement alone, experts believe that the cultivable areas in Germany will not be adequate to supply all plants with German rapeseed. As many as four years ago, the Federal Environment Office arrived at a sobering calculation: even if rapeseed were grown on half of the agricultural crop land in Germany, which seems somewhat unlikely, only a maximum of 5% of conventional diesel could be replaced with biodiesel. As a consequence, the prices for rapeseed oil have risen steadily over the last few years and will continue to increase in view of the limited cultivable land. This in turn will directly impact the production costs. “More than 80% of manufacturing costs for biodiesel are generated by the raw material,” says Eickhoff, and we’re talking about manufacturing costs of between 70 cents and 75 cents per liter, twice as high as those for crude oil. No further quantum leaps can be expected in terms of the processes either. “Most reversing processes have been exploited,” says Eickhoff.
Broadening the raw material basis
The only thing left, therefore, is an extension of the raw material basis. Nearly all plant engineers are therefore looking for alternatives. Multi-feedstock process is the banner under which BDI Biodiesel is marketing its plants, for example. The list of references shows that the Austrians can process just about anything: animal fats from slaughter waste, used edible oils and various vegetable oils. It is true that other European countries are more flexible than Germany when it comes to raw materials. Portugal and Italy use palm oil and soya oil, while the Ukraine relies on sunflowers. Africa and India, who desist from using edible oils on ethical grounds, are experimenting with the Jatropha plant, nux vomica. An Indian project funded by DaimlerChrysler has been set up, initially for a five-year period; the investigations and practical tests with fuel produced from the pilot plants are due to be completed in 2007. However, it remains to be seen when the boom in renewable raw materials will reach the chemicals industry. Initial trials in converting renewable raw materials into chemical feedstock are already underway. For the time being, however, the rapeseed fields are still burgeoning for the bio-refineries of the fuel industry.