Fuel Alcohol Breakout

The international oil price once again exceeded the threshold of US$100/barrel, which is frustrating news for many people. However, it is fortunate for Xiao Mingsong, because rising oil prices have boosted the value of fuel ethanol that he has ran for more than ten years. Recognized as a renewable fuel worldwide, fuel ethanol is difficult to replace petroleum on a large scale due to its high cost and relying on crops such as corn and wheat.

Since 2001, when the country decided to build pilots for grain-based fuel ethanol in Jilin, Heilongjiang, Anhui, and Henan, the drawbacks of the “fuel-to-grain land” for biofuels have become increasingly prominent. In particular, China’s grain production has been on the alert line. Against the backdrop of the decision-making process, the determination of large-scale development of alternative energy sources has been weakened.

In 2007, the National Development and Reform Commission called for the approval of the grain processing ethanol project. That is, starting from this year, the non-food crop fuel ethanol technology line began to be favored. Like Xiao Mingsong, Secretary-General of the Bioenergy Special Committee of the China Rural Energy Industry Association, the team devoted to non-food energy crop conversion research is expanding.

However, sadly, the project of investing 200,000 tons of cassava ethanol by Guangxi COFCO Biomass Energy Co., Ltd. was stopped in the first half of 2011, which was the largest non-food ethanol project approved in several years. Constrained by the supply of upstream raw materials and the predicament of downstream sales, this non-food demonstration sample has fallen into the embarrassing situation of being forced to stop production. The bottleneck of the second-generation cellulose technology, which is generally optimistic and meets China’s national conditions, is difficult to break through.

According to statistics, as of the end of the "Eleventh Five-Year Plan," China's biomass fuel ethanol production reached 1.72 million tons, which did not reach the planned target of 2 million tons. According to Xiao Mingsong, during the “12th Five-Year Plan” period, the target of fuel ethanol is 3 million tons. Until now, in addition to the original four fuel ethanol plants that use corn and wheat aged grains as raw materials, whether new large-scale projects have been approved has been suspicious. Fuel ethanol is ushering in a difficult breakthrough in China.

Raw material difficulties The development of fuel ethanol in China started more than a decade ago. Around 1998, Chinese grain harvested for several consecutive years, and a large amount of grain crops emerged, providing basic conditions for the conversion of grain to energy. According to media reports, in 2000, Premier Zhu Rongji made seven successive instructions on the development of fuel ethanol, and the National Development and Reform Commission took the lead in organizing research groups to visit Brazil and the United States. After the investigation, it was decided to promote ethanol gasoline in several major grain-producing areas. Four grain-based ethanol fuel companies, Jilin Fuel Ethanol, Henan Tianguan Fuel Alcohol, and Anhui Fengyuan Biochemical Co. Now known as COFCO Biochemical Anhui Co., Ltd.) and Heilongjiang Jidong Huarun Alcohol Co., Ltd. (now known as COFCO Bio-Energy Energy Jidong Co., Ltd.) came into being.

When the above four companies started work one after another, the Chen Huan grain allocated by the state was quickly used up, so Xin Liang became a raw material. Concomitantly, in 2003, China’s grain output was once below the 450-million-ton crisis line, and in the next three to four years, there was no more than 490 million tons of wealth lines. Affected by the reduction of arable land in urban development and natural disasters leading to food production cuts, policy makers have to rethink the impact of the development of food-based fuel ethanol on China’s “food security”.

At the end of 2006, the National Development and Reform Commission issued the "Circular on Strengthening the Management of Biomass Fuel Ethanol Projects, Promoting the Healthy Development of Industries" and "Emergency Notice on Suspending Corn Processing Projects". In June of the following year, the State Council convened a meeting on renewable energy and the corn-to-ethanol project was officially halted.

Turning over the map of the world's biofuel ethanol, the samples that China can learn are mainly two countries—Brazil and the United States. As of 2010, the output of Brazil's sugar cane ethanol production has reached 21.5 million tons, and the United States is 18 million tons. Unlike Brazil, the United States mainly uses corn as raw material.

For China, it is not possible to solve the domestic demand for fuel ethanol easily by large-scale planting of sugar cane, as in Brazil. It is also impossible to use most of the fuel ethanol from the United States as raw material for corn. The limited arable land has become the biggest obstacle to the production of ethanol for food production. Even in the United States where the per capita arable land area is relatively high, the problem of insufficient supply of raw materials is also encountered. According to Steven Sterin, Senior Vice President of Celanese Corporation and President of the Advanced Fuel Technology Department, in the United States, corn cultivation in the United States has required large amounts of land in recent years, and many of the land is operating at full capacity. It not only pushed up the price of corn, but also used some of the land that was originally used to grow other crops to grow corn.

“The per capita area of ​​arable land in China is about 1.38 mu, but considering the population growth and the promotion of rural urbanization, the per capita arable land area is still declining,” said Xiao Mingsong.

While grain-fuel ethanol was halted, non-food crops such as cassava, red sorghum, and lignocellulose became the “substitutes” of corn and made it onto the stage of history.

In the past few years, Li Shizhong, deputy director of the Institute of New Energy Technology, Tsinghua University’s Institute of Advanced Energy Technology, has been running around for sweet sorghum to make fuel ethanol. This technology, known as the 1.5th generation biofuel, has taken the lead internationally and developed by the ASSF method developed by Tsinghua University. The production of sweet sorghum stalk ethanol has been successfully tested in Ordos, Inner Mongolia.

Compared to the first generation of grain-based fuel ethanol, 1.5 generations of biological raw materials are mainly planted on marginal lands such as saline-alkali land and mudflat land. Li Shizhong believes that this is neither “competition with the people” nor “grabbing with the grain”.

However, its development potential is still limited. According to Xiao Mingsong's calculation, the marginal land area such as saline-alkaline land and beach land is approximately 6.67 million hectares in China. If it is used for fuel ethanol, the potential for production is about 14 million tons. However, if these lands are used for the production of fuel ethanol, they need to be improved in advance. The cost per hectare of transformation is between USD 3000-15000. This will be a huge investment for enterprises. If it is developed on a large scale, reliable supply of raw materials will become a challenge, and the seeds of sweet sorghum will need to be bred one year or even two years in advance. Large-scale development will require more time for seed cultivation.

“The seasonality of agricultural production has brought difficulties to the supply of fuel ethanol materials. For example, it is difficult to collect straw crops for the second-generation technology, and the acquisition cost is still not solved.” Ciao Advisor New Energy Industry Researcher Shaw The letter introduced.

National team game?

In Li Shizhong's view, according to the current technical conditions, sweet sorghum to fuel ethanol has already reached the level of commercialization. Taking the 2000 tons of fuel ethanol demonstration plant of Inner Mongolia Special Hong Biological Co., Ltd., which is cooperating with Tsinghua University, as an example, the production cost is about 4,500 yuan/ton. However, if large-scale expansion is needed, it will still need to wait for approval from the NDRC.

Consistent with the situation encountered by the above-mentioned Inner Mongolian companies, some companies that first intervened in the 1.5-generation biofuel sector have opted out. In Huachuan County, Heilongjiang Province, China's earlier sweet sorghum ethanol project was completed. Since the application for many years did not get access permits for the Development and Reform Commission, investment companies have basically withdrawn.

In Xiao Mingsong's opinion, the approval of the Development and Reform Commission is crucial for interested investors, and it is directly related to whether they can obtain the national fuel ethanol subsidies.

According to an industry insider, the state is hesitant to apply for 1.5-year project approvals. In particular, the suspension of production of Guangxi's COFCO cassava project also has a greater impact on the attitude of decision makers for such projects.

According to the above-mentioned industry insiders, after the COFCO cassava project was stationed in Guangxi, due to the limited supply of raw materials, the local cassava price was raised, and even caused its price to double, resulting in the inability of other small and medium-sized processing companies that use cassava as raw materials to survive. At the same time, downstream sales encountered resistance and the ethanol gasoline market was turbulent, eventually causing it to stop production. Up to now, the 100,000 tons sweet sorghum project invested by Zhongxing Energy in Wuyuan County, Inner Mongolia is currently the first domestic industrialization demonstration project that has been approved by the National Development and Reform Commission to carry out preliminary work.

Recently, Shi Lishan, deputy director of the New Energy and Renewable Energy Division of the National Energy Administration, said in an interview: “Now we are also developing bioethanol production based on sweet sorghum and cassava, and we call it non-grain ethanol. In fact, they are all One kind of food is also produced using cultivated land. The real non-food materials should be straw and timber."

It can be seen that the decision-making layer is more optimistic about the second generation of straw cellulose used as raw materials to produce fuel ethanol technology.

If we say that corn-based fuel ethanol is only the beginning of the development of China's fuel ethanol industry, sweet sorghum and potato and other non-food crops are transitional options. The use of straw cellulose as raw material to make fuel ethanol is considered the most suitable for China’s national conditions. Direction of development.

In the four fixed-point fuel ethanol companies mentioned above, experiments were conducted on cellulose fuel ethanol, and behind them are the state-owned enterprises such as COFCO, PetroChina, and Sinopec. Among them, COFCO Jidong is a wholly-owned subsidiary of COFCO, and Fengyuan Biochemical is a subsidiary of COFCO. Jilin's 20% share of ethanol is owned by COFCO, and Sinopec owns 40% of Henan Tianguan.

Oil companies have mastered terminal sales, without their participation, and there is a lack of industrial chain formation. Compared with the cooperation between COFCO and the oil companies, private enterprises here can be said to survive in the cracks. Large-scale projects are difficult to obtain approval, and they do not have access to downstream sales channels. Without financial support, there is no way to talk about commercial power. Therefore, in the past decade, for Xiaoming Song, it has become common for private entrepreneurs to enter and exit here.

Of course, there are also some foreign diggers. As a partner of Sinopec and COFCO's Cellulose Ethanol project in Heilongjiang, Novozymes is ready to make a splash in the Chinese market and provides key enzyme preparations for fiber decomposition for this cooperation project. According to reports, this key preparation accounts for about 1/3 of the cost.

As an established chemical company, Celanese opened up a technology route to produce fuel ethanol from hydrocarbons. In China, it considers coal to be the best raw material, and claims that the use of this technology does not require the government to provide it. subsidy. Although this is not a technical route for biomass, it is optimistic about the future prospects of China's fuel ethanol market. Mr. Steiner told reporters at Energy magazine that it is expected that the total number of cars in China will exceed 550 million by 2030. This means that China's demand for liquid fuels will continue for a very long time, but it is impossible to have any kind of fuel to dominate this market. China has many options and needs electricity, natural gas, and ethanol to serve this fast-growing market. In particular, as China implements increasingly stringent gasoline standards, the addition of oxygenated ethanol can increase the cleanliness of emissions.

According to Xiao Mingsong, the development of fuel ethanol must require the participation of state-owned enterprises, but if small and medium-sized enterprises enter together, they will accelerate the process of marketization to some extent.

For this point of view, Xiao Han expressed his understanding: “In the fuel ethanol industry, the government should actively guide and formulate industry regulations that are consistent with industrial development. Both state-owned and private enterprises should abide by the same market rules and access systems. Under the premise of fair competition, we will actively promote the market-oriented competition in the fuel ethanol industry. On the one hand, competition can reduce production costs, and on the other hand, the survival of the fittest can be achieved."

Item name: Ferrous Oxalate Dihydrate

Ferrous oxalate dihydrate

Search number: [CAS 6047-25-2]

Molecular formula: FeC2O4.2H2O

Molecular weight: 179.89

Properties: light yellow powder crystallization, slightly soluble in water, soluble in dilute acid, melting point 160 degrees, heated to 190 degrees when the decomposition of iron oxide; is the production of lithium iron phosphate quality materials.

Use: used as a photographic developer, for the pharmaceutical industry, battery grade Ferrous Oxalate can be used as cathode materials of lithium iron phosphate materials.

Ferrous Oxalate

Ferrous Oxalate,Ferrous Oxalate Dihydrate,Additive Ferrous Oxalate

Xi'An Lanzhiguang Fine Material CO.Ltd , http://www.lanzhiguangchem.com