Advanced biofuels program making significant technical progress

28 January 2009

DuPont Vice President & General Manager John Ranieri said the company’s plans to bring its two advanced biofuels programs to market are on track and making significant technical progress toward the commercialisation of biobutanol and the conversion of cellulosic feedstocks economically into biofuels.
“Biobutanol and cellulosic ethanol have the ability to transform the biofuels industry,” Ranieri said.

Advanced biofuels program making significant technical progress

“Our flexible business models allow us to penetrate different geographies with the ability to convert various feedstocks to meet the significant global demand for biofuels.”

The DuPont BioFuels business strategy is developing and commercialising an upstream biofuel technology to produce cellulosic ethanol that will use non-food energy feedstocks such as corn cob and switchgrass, and a downstream biofuel technology to produce biobutanol, a high-performance biofuel that can be delivered through existing gasoline distribution channels.

In May, DuPont announced a joint venture with Danisco to deliver low cost, sustainable cellulosic ethanol technology. In July, the DuPont Danisco Cellulosic Ethanol LLC joint venture announced a partnership with the University of Tennessee to build a pilot and demonstration facility for the cellulosic ethanol technology, groundbreaking scheduled later this month. Pilot production utilising corn cob and switchgrass is expected to begin in 2009 with commercially viable economics by 2010.

Biobutanol blends can be transported using existing fuel infrastructure, have a higher blend value, provide fuel economy (miles per gallon) similar to unleaded gasoline and can be blended at a minimum of 16% concentrations without the need to modify vehicles. DuPont is jointly developing biobutanol with BP in a partnership first announced in 2006.

“We are on track to have a biobutanol pilot facility operational in 2009 with the commercial biotechnology package complete by 2010 at economics comparable to grain ethanol,” Ranieri said. “Once we are commercial with biobutanol we intend to combine our technologies to make biobutanol from non-food feedstocks.”