IFP : Innovating for energy

Today, biofuels are front-page news around the world. Environmental constraints and political determination to promote the emergence of alternative energy resources are just two of the factors that have brought them back into the limelight. The ambitious targets set by the European Commission for the biofuel share (5.75% in 2010 and 10% in 2020) are encouraging the Member States to develop these technologies on a significant scale.

IFP, a pioneer in this field, is intensifying its research efforts and designing new innovative processes which will turn rapeseed, wheat or agricultural and forestry waste into the oil of the future.

• 1 - A favorable context for the emergence of new fuels
  
  • Soaring demand for energy in the transport sector
  • Transport-related CO₂ emissions
     
• 2 - Biofuels: the traditional technologies
  
  • Biodiesel (VOME - vegetable oil methyl ester) for diesel engines
  • Ethanol for gasoline engines
     
• 3 - Innovative solutions and future technologies
  
  • Towards a "100% green" biodiesel
  • Fuels synthesized from biomass
     
• 4 - How suitable are biofuels for conventional engines?
  
  • Schedule of future powertrains
  • For optimum use of biofuels with gasoline engines
     
• 5 - Standardizing biofuels across Europe: the European Biofuels Technology Platform
   
• 6 - What role for other alternative fuels?
  
  • The development of synfuels
  • What future for hydrogen technology?

1 – A favorable context for the emergence of new fuels

For the last twenty years or so, the prospect of oil reserves running out has prompted governments to bring in policies to promote alternative energy resources. In addition, volume for volume, the use of biofuels could lead to a significant reduction in greenhouse gas emissions to the tune of at least 60% to 70%. Finally, biofuels can be mixed with conventional fuels without the need for special vehicles or a specific distribution network.

Soaring demand for energy in the transport sector

>> Energy Consumption in the Transport Sector (PDF - 140 Ko)
>> Road Transport Fuels in Europe: the Explosion of Demand for Diesel Fuel (PDF - 90 Ko)

Transport-related CO₂ emissions

>> The car of the future: summary of the presentation by O. Appert and P. Pinchon [in French] (PDF - 120 Ko)

2 – Biofuels: the traditional technologies

As a genuine pioneer in the field of biofuels in France, IFP is now reaping the fruits of twenty years of research, both in terms of biofuel production processes and the impact of using them in engines. IFP's work spans all energy technologies and is contributing to the development of new energy technologies for transport, which are of enormous benefit in combating climate change.

There are two principal biofuels currently in use.

Biodiesel (VOME – vegetable oil methyl ester) for diesel engines

Although biodiesel, marketed under the name Diester™, is already available at the pump as a gas oil blend, there is likely to be a significant increase in its production in future years.

In 1992, IFP research on biofuels culminated in a biodiesel production process named Esterfip. This process, sold by Axens, is used in particular by the Compiègne-based company Sofiprotéol, which markets the biodiesel produced under the Diester™ brand. This particular biofuel is derived from rapeseed and methanol and is made up of vegetable oil methyl esters (VOME). In France, it is blended with gas oil in proportions varying between 2% and 5%, and currently sold at petrol stations with no specific identifying name, so consumers are already using this biofuel, though often without realizing it.

A new vegetable oil ester production process, developed by IFP and known as Esterfip-H™, is also marketed by Axens.
This new process uses a solid catalyst developed at IFP, of the same type as those commonly used in traditional refineries, but not, as yet, adapted to biodiesel production. It was after analyzing the drawbacks of homogeneous catalysis processes that IFP and Axens teams decided to focus research on a solid catalyst. Following R&D studies on the definition of the catalyst and operating conditions conducted by the Catalysis and Separation and Applied Chemistry and Physical-Chemistry divisions, Process Development and Engineering division teams provided Axens with the data required to draft the process book.
The Diester Industrie production plant in Sète is Axen's first customer for this technology.

Esterfip-H™ is used to obtain a biodiesel (VOME) and a glycerin (co-product of biodiesel production) of higher quality and with improved efficiency. It also has other advantages over industrial units already producing biodiesel, in that soya or palm can replace rapeseed as the raw material. The process is therefore likely to be of interest to the Asian and American markets. Moreover, the quality of the glycerin produced should enable it to find new outlets, even though the current market for ordinary glycerin is already saturated.

The advantages of using biodiesel are relatively obvious, not only for the environment (energy and greenhouse-gas balances are better with Diester™ than with gas oil), but also for technical reasons. An IFP study shows that incorporating 2% or more of VOME significantly improves diesel fuel lubricity in engines.

Moreover, the ever-growing share of diesel-powered cars in France results in the country importing around 30% of its gas oil requirements, while it has a surplus production of gasoline. Producing biodiesel is therefore one way of limiting our imports. However, if France is to meet the indicative targets for 2010 set by the new EU directives, it will have to achieve an annual output of 2.65 million tons of biodiesel by then. This would appear to be a difficult target to meet, given the limited amount of land set aside for growing oilseed crops.

>> Esterfip-H™: video interview with Laurent Bournay - Project Manager, IFP (see the video hereunder)

>> Biodiesel: 2nd Generation Technology [slideshow for a conference of the World Refining Association, March 2005] (PDF - 430 Ko)

Ethanol for gasoline engines

The most widely-used biofuel in the world today is ethanol, which is mixed with gasoline in concentrations of between 10% and 25%, or even used pure in some engines. Ethanol is an alcohol produced by fermenting either sugar (beet or sugar cane) or starch (wheat or corn). Its derivative ETBE (Ethyltertiobutylether), which can be mixed with gasoline in concentrations of up to 15%, is currently the most frequently-used form in Europe.

>> Biofuels Worldwide (PDF - 140 Ko)

Further information

• Panorama 2007 - "What future and what role for biofuels?" : download the technical reports
• IFP book [in French] : Les biocarburants - Etat des lieux, perspectives et enjeux du développement (Editions Technip)
• IFP book [in French] : Le plein de biocarburants ? - Enjeux et réalités (Editions Technip)

3 – Innovative solutions and future technologies

IFP is exploring new biofuel production methods using catalytic and biological processes as well as gasification. In so doing, it is helping to diversify production sources for alternative fuels

IFP's expertise and innovative solutions are instrumental in reducing the costs of producing biofuels, whilst diversifying their sources. To this end, different processes are currently under study at varying stages of advancement.

Towards a "100% green" biodiesel

The main advantage of the processes developed by IFP is that the resulting biodiesel could ultimately be made 100% green by using ethanol – which is derived from biomass - instead of methanol – which is obtained from gas. The vegetable oil ethyl ester (VOEE) produced today by the Esterfip-H™ process is a biodiesel already tested by IFP and shown to have useful properties.

This new 100% green biodiesel is produced from low-cost ethanol, so IFP is examining the feasibility of new, cheaper production processes. Such processes would involve the biological conversion of biomass such as cereal straw, corn stalks, wood waste, etc. Research is being conducted jointly with INRA and CNRS.

Fuels synthesized from biomass

Two approaches to the conversion of biomass into fuels are currently under study at IFP. The first approach is biofuels, which fall into two broad types, namely ethanol (produced by enzyme hydrolysis of lignocellulosic biomass) and biodiesel (produced by transesterification of vegetable oils). The second approach is Biomass-To-Liquid (BTL), which uses Fischer-Tropsch synthesis to produce fuels of excellent quality.

The BTL approach requires the biomass to be first gasified into syngas. However, unlike the Gas-To-Liquid (GTL) approach, where the industrial processes for producing syngas have been known and used for several decades, there are currently no industrial plants for biomass gasification. To address this need, IFP is accordingly conducting a joint research and development program on the subject with the French Atomic Energy Commission (CEA). The focus of the research is on improving the material yields of gasification, purifying the gases, optimizing integration of the biomass conversion process and liquid-fuel production processes.
Biomass gasification also opens up possibilities for producing hydrogen and energy (electricity/heat).

>> Press release (31 March 2008) : 2nd-generation biofuels: IFP enhances its experimental facilities in the field of biofuels obtained from the thermochemical conversion of biomass (BtL – Biomass to liquid)

4 – How suitable are biofuels for conventional engines?

Schedule of future powertrains:

- 2005: Euro IV Standards, particulate filters, sulfur-free fuels, diesel downsizing
- 2005 <--> 2010: gasoline downsizing, special natural-gas engine, NOx trap HCCI diesel, biofuels, 4-way catalysis, variable valve timing on diesel, light hybrids high-pressure gasoline injection, CAI gasoline homogeneous combustion, full hybrid
- 2015 <--> 2020: natural-gas hybrid, diesel hybrid
- 2020 or later: fuel cell, hydrogen hybrid.

For optimum use of biofuels with gasoline engines

Interview with Xavier Montagne, head of the Fuels – Lubricants - Emissions Department, Energy Applications Techniques Division.

What are the different biofuels used in gasoline engines?
For spark ignition engines, the basic biofuel is ethanol. It can be used either mixed with gasoline in traditional engines or pure in vehicles with specially-adapted engines. The big advantage with ethanol is its high octane rating. Unfortunately, incorporating it directly into gasoline poses a number of technical problems: it leads to an increase in vapor pressure, and gasoline/ethanol blends also do not react well to the presence of water traces. It is for this reason that consumers generally prefer to use ETBE, a derivative of ethanol, for which IFP has developed a manufacturing process. ETBE eliminates the drawbacks encountered with ethanol. EU regulations allow fuel blends to include up to 15% of ETBE and up to 5% of ethanol in Europe.

How has IFP helped optimize the use of biofuels in these engines?
As a general rule, the IFP researchers working on biofuel production processes have always aimed to obtain a product quality that is as compatible as possible with the latest vehicle engines. Another core concern has been to fully understand the impact of using biofuel blends on engine operation and service life (performance, clogging, etc.) and pollutant emissions, whether regulated or not. IFP made a substantial contribution to research aimed at ensuring compatibility with technologies coming into force for the Euro IV standard applicable from 2005. Now IFP research has turned its focus to Euro V-compliant technologies.
For spark ignition engines in particular, IFP is pursuing several research avenues including the optimization of a gasoline engine dedicated to ethanol.

5 – Standardizing biofuels across Europe: the European Biofuels Technology Platform

The EU has set up a dedicated technology platform to deal with biofuels.

Under the chairmanship of Repsol YPF, it held its first general meeting in March 2006 in Brussels. Olivier Appert, IFP Chairman and CEO, is the organization's vice-chair. Project participants, including Total, Volkswagen, Fiat, Abengoa, Neste Oil and IFP, have set out to identify ways of raising the biofuel share in the transport sector from its current 1% level to 25% by 2030.

Five Work Groups have been set up, including one led by IFP's Director for Sustainable Development, Alexandre Rojey.

>> For more information: European Biofuels Technology Platform

6 – What role for other alternative fuels?

The development of synfuels

Natural gas would appear to be a promising energy source for the transport industry, especially when converted into "synfuels" that can then be used directly in conventional IC engines.
A number of industrialists have recently decided to invest in this approach. Shell, for instance, is the first company to begin producing synfuels from natural gas at its Bintulu facility in Malaysia. This small production plant (12 500 barrels/day) has been operational since 1993 and is to date the only plant in the world to produce this type of fuel, known as GTL (for Gas-To-Liquid). Although the cost of such plants is still a major obstacle to their development, plans are under way to build a number of production facilities, producing some tens of thousands of barrels per day, financed by not only Shell but also Qatar Petroleum, Sasol and others.

The industrial processes entailed in producing synfuels have been known since the beginning of the century. They were widely used to cope with oil shortages, first in Germany during the Second World War, then in South Africa from 1955 onwards, during the embargo under apartheid. In both cases, coal served as the raw material for producing synfuels.
Synfuels can, in fact, be produced from any raw material (or "feedstock") that contains carbon and hydrogen. Be it coal, biomass or natural gas, the fuels obtained will have similar characteristics. For economic reasons, though, the feedstock most commonly used today is natural gas. The nature of the feedstocks used in the other approaches (CTL for Coal-To-Liquid and BTL for Biomass-To-Liquid) means that the R&D work entailed is more costly.
The synfuel production chain comprises several stages :

• the first consists in producing a syngas (mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen) by gasification or steam reforming. Gasification is a process that can be used with any type of feedstock, whereas steam reforming tends to be used only for light, gas-type feedstocks such as LPG, naphtha or even ethanol,
   
• the second stage consists in converting the syngas obtained into a wax. This is achieved through Fischer-Tropsch synthesis, named after the two German engineers, Hans Fischer and Franz Tropsch, who developed the process in 1920,
   
• during the third stage, the wax is further modified and enhanced using an isomerizing hydrocracking process that yields LPG, naphtha and gas oil.

The gas oil obtained is of excellent quality: it contains no sulfur or aromatic molecules (benzene, toluene) and releases very few particles when burnt in a car engine. Its cetane number, which reflects the quality of combustion, is very high. The only drawback is that its density is a little too low (which, with current specifications, means it has to be used in blended forms). Research currently under way at IFP shows that such fuels are now considered suitable for today's diesel engines.
Numerous research teams around the world are working on GTL, BTL and even CTL with a view to cutting costs.

IFP research spans all three stages of the process: gasification, Fischer-Tropsch synthesis and wax hydrocracking.
For the gasification stage (which consists in producing a syngas), IFP is focusing on biomass in a bid to develop an environmentally-friendly BTL solution.
For the Fischer-Tropsch stage, which is used to obtain waxes from the syngas produced in the previous stage, IFP has been developing a process jointly with EniTecnologie (a subsidiary of ENI, Italy's national oil company) since 1996. A pilot plant with a capacity of 20 barrels of GTL per day was commissioned in 2001 in Sannazzaro (Italy). The aim is to cut synfuel production costs by at least 20%.
Finally, for the stage in which waxes are hydrocracked and isomerized to yield gas oil, IFP has for many years been developing a process that converts waxes into very high-quality gas oil. Axens, a subsidiary of IFP, already markets this type of unit.
It should also be pointed out that GTL technology is an ideal solution for using the gas produced during petroleum production operations. This gas is often simply burned ("gas flaring"), a practice that is increasingly banned as it releases large quantities of CO₂ without the energy produced being used in any way. By converting the gas into GTL, industrialists are killing two birds with one stone: they are working an oil field and using the gas produced to make fuel.

What future for hydrogen technology?

Today hydrogen is used mainly in industrial applications such as the chemicals industry to produce ammonia, in the refining of petroleum products or to produce methanol. A small amount (2%) is used as fuel in the aerospace industry. There is however growing talk of using hydrogen as a transport fuel, especially in fuel cells. It is one of the solutions being considered to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels. It would reduce urban pollution as well as greenhouse gas emissions, providing the hydrogen were produced from zero-emission energy.

• Producing "clean" hydrogen

The first hurdle consists in finding clean methods for producing hydrogen, limiting CO₂ emissions in particular. Unlike fossil fuels or even the wind and sun, hydrogen is not a primary energy source. Although it is one of the most abundant elements on the planet, it does not exist in the form of a deposit that can be tapped directly. It is almost always combined with either oxygen (as in water) or carbon (as with natural gas, oil, coal or biomass). It has to be produced, therefore, from these sources.
The crux of the matter lies in establishing which source of hydrogen to choose and which source of energy to use to produce the hydrogen.

For several years, IFP has been developing cost-effective, clean hydrogen production processes for converting hydrocarbonated matter into hydrogen. The two principal sources researched are hydrocarbons and biomass.
- The OPALE project is based on the principle of gasification by partial oxidation, using oxygen from liquid hydrocarbons.
- The BIOPAC project consists in using "green" ethanol and steam reforming to produce hydrogen to power a fuel cell. The ethanol used is obtained from biomass, specifically beet or wheat.

Ultimately, the best idea for producing CO₂-free hydrogen might be to centralize hydrogen production in large plants, capture the CO₂ emitted and store it underground (the European CACHET project).
However, distributing the hydrogen so produced poses major infrastructure problems. Accordingly the first applications targeted are in industry (refining, chemicals) and zero-emission fossil fuel power plants.

• Producing hydrogen in an economically viable way

Clearly the future of the hydrogen solution hinges on the production technology employed. It is essential therefore to weigh up the benefits of the various industrial solutions in the light of both economic (energy consumption) and ecological considerations (primarily CO₂ emissions). To this end, IFP took part in a wide-ranging evaluation to define the most relevant balances to be taken into account for each type of fuel. The leading partners in Europe's transport industry also contributed to the study, which was completed in early 2004.
IFP has also developed a fuel chain evaluation software program, E3database, with the Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) and a German laboratory (LBST) specializing in hydrogen. The software has been used in the context of an international agreement signed in fall 2003 in the United States, the IPHE (International partnership for the hydrogen economy).

>> Further information : European projects on Hydrogen.

• How should hydrogen be transported and stored?

IFP is also involved in suggesting solutions to the problem of hydrogen transportation. One solution may be to use the existing network of gas pipelines and mix the hydrogen with natural gas. These options are being researched within the framework of a European project called “Naturalhy”.
Finally, on top of problems of hydrogen production and transportation, there remains the issue of on-board storage. Hydrogen is a very light gas which must be stored on-board a vehicle in either compressed form (350 bars or even 700 bars) or liquid form, but at a temperature of -253°C! The preferred solution today is storage in compressed form (350 bars). Current prototypes have a range of 200 kilometers. Storage in liquid form gives vehicles a range of 400 km, but the drawback with this option is energy consumption due to the required liquefaction temperatures.
A third solution being researched at IFP is to store hydrogen in the form of hydrides. However several hundred kilograms of hydrides are needed to store just a few kilograms of hydrogen, and 4 to 5 kg of hydrogen are required for a range of between 400 and 500 km.

Promising applications, but some are long-term

IFP is researching all future hydrogen applications. These applications can only be considered in the form of successive stages, some long-term:

• applications for refining and the chemicals industry: issues in this area are directly related to processes researched at IFP;
• zero-emission fossil fuel electricity generation. This is the primary focus of the European ENCAP project in which IFP is involved. The research is expected to result in a large-scale pilot operation as part of the European HYPOGEN project;
• decentralized stationary applications for electricity and heat production using fuel cells;
• applications in the transport sector: many obstacles have yet to be overcome in this area (hydrogen distribution, on-board storage, converters). The fuel cell, despite being the preferred converter for this application, still has limitations in terms of cost and durability that rule out any very wide-scale distribution.

The alternative solution of using hydrogen in an internal combustion engine (either pure or blended with compressed natural gas) is being researched at IFP, but seems, at this stage, to be a potential transitional solution.

>> Hydrogen, energy vector of the future? (PDF - 400 Ko)