US companies Phillips 66 and Renewable Energy Group, Inc. joined forces for the construction of a large-scale renewable diesel plant on the U.S. West Coast. The plant would utilize REG’s proprietary BioSynfining® technology for the production of renewable diesel fuel. Planned feedstocks include a mix of waste fats, oils and greases, including regionally-sourced vegetable oils, animal fats and used cooking oil.
The Pasadena Fire Department, a California city northeast of Los Angeles, switched much of its fleet of apparatus from operating on petroleum diesel to using Neste MY Renewable Diesel, produced by the Finnish company Neste. The department plans to transition all its fleet apparatus to renewable diesel by 2019.
ExxonMobil and Renewable Energy Group (REG) have demonstrated the ability to convert sugars from a variety of non-edible biomass sources into biodiesel by utilizing REG’s patented fermentation technology
Researchers from the Cardiff Catalysis Institute have devised a way of increasing the yield of biodiesel by using the waste left over from its production process.
Using simple catalysis, the researchers have been able to recycle a non-desired by-product produced when biodiesel is formed from vegetable oil, and convert this into an ingredient to produce even more biodiesel.
UK biofuel policy may need to be modified. To say it is a report published by Chatham House, a british think tank focused on “Costs and Consequences of Expanding Biofuel Use in the United Kingdom”. According to Rob Bailey, author of the report, “in its present form the RTFO (Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation, editor’s note) may not be an appropriate instrument for achieving the RED (Renewable Energy Directive, editor’s note) target economically. Its volumetric target incentivizes suppliers to minimize cost per litre by supplying ethanol, thereby also minimizing the amount of energy supplied by biofuels. This runs counter to the objective of the RED to increase the share of energy from biofuels.
