Ethanol Plants Making Biobutanol

You may have heard in the last few months that many of the US ethanol plants have closed their doors. Even while the federal mandates for ethanol mixes in our petroleum gasoline increase, the amount of ethanol that we produce is decreasing. Some of this is due to the pressure on the most common ethanol feedstock, corn. Corn prices have risen, and gas prices have fallen, making the profit from ethanol production very limited and volatile.

But some entrepreneurs are looking into the possibility of converting the idle ethanol plants to produce biobutanol instead. Biobutanol is made from a variety of inedible crops as well as the more popular edible feedstocks, corn and wheat.  Biobutanol has few of the drawbacks of ethanol and can be mixed in with gasoline in higher concentrations and moved in the existing gas pipelines — unlike ethanol which is limited in the percentage mixed with petroleum gas and cannot be moved in the pipieline.

In addition to its application in the gasoline market, biobutanol can be used in the plastics industry in flat-screen television sets and water bottles.

Biobutanol as an industry, is still in its infancy, but is showing promise as an alternative to ethanol in our gas tanks.

Reference: “Makers of Ethanol Ponder Alternative”, by Russell Gold, Wall Street Journal, Wednesday, September 30, 2009