European Union Bioethanol Fuel Replacement Project Will Soak Up Agri Surplus

---

Researched by Industrialinfo.com (Industrial Information Resources Incorporated; Houston, Texas). A European bioenergy project has been launched in Denmark aimed at reducing the costs of producing electricity and bioethanol, based on biomass. Partners in the $14.5 million project with Elsam are the Royal Veterinary and Agricultural College Research Centre (Riso, Denmark), the development company Sicco (Alsgarde, Denmark), Agrol Biotechnologies (Guildford, United Kingdom), and Energia Hidroelectrica de Navarra (Navarra, Spain).

The bioethanol is to be used as an additive to petrol and diesel to obtain an improved and cleaner combustion and to reduce the CO2 emissions in the transport sector. Bioethanol is one of the options to replace the problematic additive MTBE in fuel.

The by-product from the project process consists of pure fiber, which is pressed and dried prior to clean combustion together with coal or natural gas in existing power generating plants.

The project will be implemented over the next 40 months with the European Union (EU) contributing $7 million, which is the maximum contribution granted for a development project. The project is based on a draft EU directive of 2001 that targets replacement of 5.75% of all petrol and diesel fuel to be replaced by biofuel by 2010. This corresponds to a replacement of around 20 billion liters of petrol and diesel. It is expected that alcohol will be the dominant biofuel in the EU, as it is in the USA and Brazil. The goal of the Danish based project is the replacement 18 billion liters of petrol and diesel by alcohol that will require 30 billion liters of alcohol.

A selected Elsam plant will create the framework of the first pilot project that will place special emphasis on straw, household waste and whole seed as raw material. This could help to provide a constructive solution to the chronic surplus production of European farming that will be exacerbated as the EU extends over eastern European countries. Organic waste from factories, farming, forestry, and households will support the biofuel push.