BioFuels Journal

China Adds Emphasis to Ethanol Production as Biodiesel Feedstocks Remain Low and Costly

Dublin, Ireland—Research and Markets has announced the addition of "China Biofuel Industry Market Outlook" to their offering.

Biofuel is any fuel that is derived from biomass - recently living organisms or their metabolic byproducts, such as manure from cows.

It is a renewable energy source, unlike other natural resources such as petroleum, coal, and nuclear fuels.

Ethanol is manufactured from microbial conversion of biomass materials through fermentation. Ethanol contains 35% oxygen.

The production process consists of conversion of biomass to fermentable sugars, fermentation of sugars to ethanol, and the separation and purification of the ethanol. Fermentation initially produces ethanol containing a substantial amount of water.

Distillation removes the majority of water to yield about 95% purity ethanol, the balance being water. This mixture is called hydrous ethanol.

If the remaining water is removed in a further process, the ethanol is called anhydrous ethanol and is suitable for blending into gasoline.

Ethanol is “denatured” prior to leaving the plant to make it unfit for human consumption by addition of a small amount of products such as gasoline.

Biodiesel fuels are oxygenated organic compounds - methyl or ethyl esters - derived from a variety of renewable sources such as vegetable oil, animal fat, and cooking oil.

The oxygen contained in biodiesel makes it unstable and requires stabilization to avoid storage problems. Rapeseed methyl ester (RME) diesel, derived from rapeseed oil, is the most common biodiesel fuel available in Europe.

In the United States, biodiesel from soybean oil, called soy methyl ester diesel, is the most common biodiesel.

Collectively, these fuels are referred to as fatty acid methyl esters (FAME).

Together with strong economic growth, China’s demand for energy is surging rapidly.

EIA forecasts that China’s oil consumption will increase by almost half a million barrels per day in 2006, or 38% of the total growth in world oil demand.

China is the world’s third-largest net importer of oil behind the United States and Japan, an important factor in world oil markets.

China produces two types of biofuels, fuel ethanol and biodiesel.

China’s government has been putting more emphasis on fuel ethanol development, as China is lacking in suitable sources for biodiesel production.

China is a big net importer of all the major edible vegetable oils, and it lacks the land for crops production for biodiesel.

Currently most of China’s biodiesel production is produced from animal fat or waste vegetable oil from oil crushing plants or restaurants.

And biodiesel plants are small, ranging from 100 to 20,000 metric tons (mt) of production.

In contrast to fuel ethanol production, which has government support policies, strict production standards, and regulations, biodiesel production is provided with fewer incentives for development in the near future.

The report Biofuel Industry in China is a complete coverage of the ethanol and biodiesel market in the country.