Eric G. Holthusen, Shell Global Solutions fuels technology manager for Asia/Pacific and Middle East, said the oil firm’s joint venture with Iogen Corp. — a Canada-based leading biotechnology firm specializing in cellulosic ethanol — is expected to yield a new type of commercial biofuels soon.
Brazil, the world’s leader in producing ethanol gas from sugar cane byproducts pioneered in mass production of this venture.
Holthusen said Shell is leaning on using “biofuels of the second generation,” which is defined as plant waste so as not to compete with food demand.
First generation biofuels are produced from food crops.
Though this type of biofuel is sustainable, Holthusen said Shell prefer to experiment on the sustainability of plant waste.
“At present, there is good reason to use first generation biofuels. They are sustainable. We don’t have issues with food competition [yet]. We have sugar cane out of Brazil and they are quite good. They prevent [carbon dioxide] generation,” said Holthusen.
“But we want to go one-step further. We don’t want to use crops. We want to use plant waste. It could be rice husk, straw, wood cuttings,” he added.
So far, Shell has invested millions of dollars in two prototype facilities using plant waste.
One is in the U.S. which is run by Iogen and one more is under construction in Germany.
“We can make ethanol gasoline out of straw. The plant that we are running takes straw from the corn fields. The corn get into the food chain and the straw goes into this process. So it’s called ‘co-generation’ — food and fuel. And the company is called Iogen — this company is owned by Shell,” said Holthusen.
“The Iogen venture is close to commercialization. I would say two to three years and we would see more of that,” he added. “We have another prototype plant under construction in Germany where we take wood chips and turn that into fuel. Wood chips from the furniture industry for example. That’s a much more complex process.”
Holthusen’s team of fuel scientists gets at least $100 million every year to discover and develop new types of fuels.
The fuel scientist said liquid fuel will dominate the transportation market over the next 50 years or so despite new discoveries, but these will be more environmentally friendly.
“We believe that for the next 50 years at least, we would have liquid for transportation. We won’t see gas. We won’t see hydrogen. We’d see it creeping in, in small quantities, but the bulk, will be liquid fuels,” said Holthusen who was in Saipan last week to help launch Shell’s V-Power fuel.
With global warming becoming a major issue, Holthusen said the need to produce more environmentally friendly types of fuel must be on top of the agenda.
“We are a commercial private company. We have shareholders. We need to generate profit but the aspect of being a good corporate citizen, of caring for the environment, is very high on our agenda. All of our projects include very thorough CO2 balance investigation,” he said.
“Global warming is something that concerns all of us. We are working on solutions for the future to do our part to help with CO2 reduction,” he added.
