Transportation fuels

Biomass is already being used for the production of transportation fuels: biodiesel is made from vegetable oils, such as rape seed oil or palm oil. Bioethanol is made from sugars and starches. In 2006, 1.8% of transportation fuels for road traffic in the European Union were made from biomass. The European Union target is to increase that percentage to 5.75% by 2010.

Future in Biofuels
Today’s biofuels, also called first generation biofuels, are a first step. The more sustainable second generation will be based on woody and grassy energy crops as well as residual streams from food and wood industry. This requires new technology.
Advantages of the second generation are:

• No food crops will be used as feedstock.
• The yield of biofuel per hectare of land will increase.
• A greater variety of biomass types can be used.
• Second generation fuels will result in lower Greenhouse gas emissions than is the case for first generation fuels.

Second Generation at ECN
ECN is developing knowledge and technology for two paths towards realising second generation fuels.

1. The pathway via synthesis gas
   Syngas, a mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide, can be made from practically any raw material containing carbon: coal, oil, oil, residues and also biomass. The feedstock is broken down thermally (using heat) into predominately hydrogen and carbon monoxide. These are important building blocks for the chemical industry that can be catalytically converted into a wide variety of products including transportation fuels.
2. The pathway via sugars
   Sugars are converted to many different products, like ethanol and butanol, using biochemical processes. These alcohols can be used for transportation fuels. Woody and grassy energy crops contain the sugar polymers: hemicellulose en cellulose. In order to convert these into alcohols, the sugar polymers must be broken down first through pre-treatment and (enzymatic) hydrolysis of the biomass. The resulting separate sugar molecules are converted into bioethanol and biobutanol using existing technology. ECN research is focussed on the thermal pre-treatment of biomass.

In addition, ECN is performing design and evaluation studies of integrated processes for the production of transportation fuels made from biomass.