DuPont to Research Truly Alternative Fuels at $140 Million Switchgrass Ethanol Plant

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Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--While corn-fed fuel-ethanol plants seem to be springing up right and left in the U.S., DuPont (NYSE:DD) (Wilmington, Delaware) has a unique research-driven perspective on both the upstream and downstream sectors of the alternative fuels market. John Ranieri, DuPont's Vice President and General Manager for Applied Biosciences - Energy & Specialties, spoke recently at Citigroup's 2008 Agriculture Conference in New York, New York, and discussed the company's current position in and plans for the Alternative Fuels Industry.

On the upstream side of the industry, DuPont is pursuing an enzymatic means of producing fuels, believing this is a much more economically viable means of production compared with thermochemical production. DuPont is hoping to move to more efficient feedstocks for fuel production and as Ranieri said, to "not have the fuel-food competition seen over the last couple of years."

In order to avoid the fuel-food competition, DuPont is focusing on non-grain energy crops. Ranieri said, "When you evolve to a dedicated energy crop such as switchgrass...you evolve to where you can grow three times the carbon per acre. ...Not only do you get more carbon per acre, but you also significantly reduce the environmental footprint because of your efficiency."

DuPont has teamed up with Denmark-based company Danisco (CPH:DCO) (Copenhagen), in order to bring further expertise to the research of the pretreatment, enzymatic and microbial processes needed for such cellulosic fuel production. "Right now," said Ranieri, "the objective is to put these pieces together and come up with a pilot plant that would then develop the commercialization technology package to build the first commercial demonstration unit." Industrial Info, as part of its Ethanol Database, is currently monitoring the progress of this demonstration project. Construction of the $140 million plant in Vonore, Tennessee, located about 35 miles from Knoxville, is scheduled to begin in November of this year and is planned to last for about 12 months. The plant will be able to produce ethanol from switchgrass feedstocks and should be in operation by 2010. Ranieri noted that China had banned the use of grains for fuel production, making cellulosic fuel-production technology desirable for the Asian market.

In the downstream sector, DuPont is focusing on the type of fuel produced. Ranieri said that because of an "evolutionary artifact" that ethanol was easy and relatively inexpensive to manufacture. "If you really had your druthers and looked back from the marketplace, you probably wouldn't pick ethanol," he said, going on to point out that butanol brings significant downstream value because of lower distribution costs, higher blending values and more energy density than ethanol. Butanol can be piped directly to refineries. Its higher energy density allows for more miles per volume when compared to ethanol. While ethanol can be feasibly blended with gasoline in amounts of 10% to 12%, butanol could easily be blended at rates of up to 16%. DuPont is currently teamed up with BP (NYSE:BP) (London) to research the microbial manufacturing of butanol. For more information, see April 14, 2008, article - BP to Invest $1.5 Billion in Alternative Energy.

Ranieri explained that the ultimate goal in alternative fuel production is to create the highest-value fuel form the lowest-cost carbon. While DuPont is currently working on separate switchgrass and butanol projects, the combination of these two technologies would provide a superior biofuel. Existing ethanol plants could still be valuable, as DuPont would like to soon try and convert an existing ethanol plant into a butanol plant, demonstrating that radical changes do not need to be made in order to make DuPont's vision a reality in the Alternative Fuels Industry.

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