Biofuels, Fuels from Waste, Waste-to-Fuels

Biofuels: A Decision Maker’s Guide to
Opportunities for Converting Biomass & Wastes into Transport Fuels

This report, published in April 2009, considers more than 70 different pathways for deriving a range of fuels from biomass resources.

It will be an invaluable tool for investors, corporates and others interested in this market. It guides the reader through this complex and rapidly evolving sector, helping to identify ‘hotspots’ of market activity, pointing to interesting new developments and reviewing the current status of the market on a global basis.

The market for sustainable transport fuels is growing rapidly, yet it has already become clear that many ways of deriving these are either uneconomic or open to criticism.

These and many other issues are discussed in this new Management Briefing, which provides a succinct and comprehensive guide to the bewildering array of technologies, feed materials and output fuels that are being championed as the optimal solutions for meeting the world’s demand for biofuels.

This Management Briefing concentrates on summarising the current status of the technologies, identifying key players and segmenting the market. It addresses questions such as:

How proven are the technologies?
How far are they from commercial reality?
Can they handle more challenging heterogeneous inputs, like MSW?
Which processes are suitable for producing particular types of fuel
Which technologies are being applied to which feeds?

The activities of more than 100 companies active in the sector are categorised to provide a unique insight into which areas are seen as most promising by key players.

The scope of this 92 page report is broad. It includes coverage of all biogenic materials that are being considered as an alternative to conventional fossil fuels, including energy crops, bio-wastes and municipal wastes and the conversion of these into biodiesel, ethanol, methanol, butanol, synthetic crude, DME, biomethane and other types of transport fuels.

From a technology perspective the full range of biochemical, chemical, thermo-chemical and physical processes are considered.

Together the range of technologies, inputs and output fuels generates a multiplicity of combinations, each of which has specific advantages and disadvantages, as described in this review.

Table of Contents

Scope of the Review
Pathways to Biofuels
Hot Spots of Market Activity
Which Biofuel?
Substitutes for gasoline
Substitutes for diesel and heavy oils
Methane and hydrogen as fuel replacement
Selected Technologies for Biofuel Production
Catalytic conversion of syngas to produce methanol, ethanol and DME
Cellulosic fermentation to ethanol
Gasification + syngas 'fermentation to ethanol'
AB fermentation of sugars and starches to butanol
Pyrolysis to produce diesel, jet fuel and gasoline
De-polymerisation to diesel / heavy oil
Anaerobic Digestion + biogas upgrading to biomethane
Which Feedstock
The Waste Challenge
'Foodstock' or 'Feedstock' for ethanol?
Oils and Fats
Waste oils (Waste petroleum-based and synthetic oils)
Municipal Solid Waste
Black Liquor
An Alternative Feedstock - citrus peels
Companies visible in the Biofuels Market
Which companies are pursuing which technology pathways?
Which companies are targeting which types of biofuels?
Which feedstock materials are being targeted by which company?
Juniper’s Opinion
The opportunity
Which pathways will be the most interesting commercially?
Market dynamics: M & A activity, partnerships and consolidation
Appendix A: Thumbnail profiles of 133 companies active in the sector