Innovative catalysts open new opportunities in biodiesel market

摘要

The current, widely used process for producing biodiesel dates to chemistries extant since the late 19th and early 20th centuries: batch operations, using homogeneous catalysts, batch separations, and the like. As the US biodiesel industry began to expand rapidly in 2005, US producers faced the persistent problems of competing with the food industry for the same feedstock—refined, bleached, and deodorized (RBD) soybean oil—and ever-increasing prices and thinner margins. Along with this came the still-simmering food vs. fuel debate over how US agricultural potential should be allocated.While the opportunity for a new biodiesel technology capable of processing no-food feedstock was vast, to be commercially viable such a technology had to be better suited to large-volume commodity production, to be largely insensitive to feedstock variability, and to provide a better return on invested capital than existing technologies. For Benefuel (Irving, Texas, USA), the challenge was to surpass the initial entry of Axens (Salindres, France) Esterfip-H* catalyst, which entered the US market in 2007.