Biofuels & e-Fuels

As a participant to this course, you will explore renewable fuels like biofuels and e-fuels, covering production processes, sustainability, regulations, and market trends. You will gain practical insights to contribute to biofuel and e-fuel projects and navigate the evolving energy landscape.

Participants may include: scientists and technologists from oil & gas, petrochemical and pulp & paper or other bio/e-fuel industries; business managers; government departments interested in renewables; investors from venture capitalists and financial institutions will also highly benefit from this course.

You will gain a deep and thorough understanding and critical comprehension of biofuels and e-fuels, their promise for the future as well as an appreciation of the technical and economic challenges and the role of government legislation, mandates & subsidies and feedstocks. In particular the pros and cons of the various biofuels and e-fuels processes, their scaling up towards commercialisation, their chances of success looking to 2025, 2030 and beyond, are presented.

1st day – Introduction to biofuels & Advanced biofuels

• 1st generation biofuels such as ethanol and fatty acid methyl esters, the current default solutions for blending in gasoline and diesel, respectively, to achieve mandate compliance
• Hydrotreated vegetable oils (HVO) for diesel blending from the hydrogenation of vegetable oils, used cooking oils, animal fats and other waste feeds.
• Coprocessing of vegetable oils in refinery units such as HDS units

Practical and technological aspects of the hydrotreating processes and coprocessing of vegetable oils including engineering challenges:

• Cellulosic ethanol and butanol
• Gasification of biomass to methanol
• Gasification with Fischer Tropsch to BTL
• Introduction to e-fuels from FischerTropsch processes, to methanol, and to ammonia
• Renewables legislation and subsidies, especially in USA and EU

2nd day – Advanced biofuels & E-fuels: in depth discussion of the various e-fuels and routes

Practical worked examples on technoeconomic evaluations of manufacturing routes, especially of the biofuel processes:

• Sustainable aviation fuels
• Integrated Hydropyrolysis and Hydroconversion (IH2)
• Lanzatech’s conversion of carbon rich flue gases to ethanol
• Alcohol routes to renewable jet and diesel
• Pyrolysis oil from biomass and from waste plastics
• Hydrothermal liquefaction
• Algae as a CO2 sink to produce lipids as sustainable substitutes for vegetable oils

• Technology maturity assessment, scale-up risks, TRL
• Requirements / options for integration of technologies into existing production routes
• Green electricity: basic options, cost projections, associated risks & uncertainties
• For carbon-based materials: sourcing of (green) CO2 feedstocks (options, issues & technologies)
• Basic economic assessments, including projections on expected costs and their evolution
• Projected market potential of products in e-fuels