- Michael J. Economides, Energy Columnist, Troy Media
KAZAKHSTAN, Once in a while, a real solution to a vexing international problem revises the popular - and frequently misguided - hype. The announcement on Nov. 10 by Celanese Corporation that it has developed a means to extract ethanol from basic hydrocarbon feedstocks surely fits the bill.
In Celanese's "innovative process technology," anything from coal to natural gas to pet coke can be used.
Previously preposterous solutions
There has been a lot of noise in the energy scene in the last two years: $150 oil, collapsing to $40 after the economic meltdown of 2008 and now heading back to $100; the election of decidedly anti-fossil-fuels (at least in the beginning) U.S. President Barack Obama; widespread talk of a carbon constraint future which was expected to reach a crescendo in Copenhagen in December 2009, but ended with an ignominious whimper. (China will simply never acquiesce to a carbon cap and it looks like the U.S. public will not either. This will last for decades.)
In the environmentalist fervor of the last few years, preposterous solutions like wind and solar have been offered, even in the face of overwhelming evidence that they cannot replace fossil fuels for decades, if ever. It is not just the costs which the only conceivable source, governments can no longer afford; thermodynamics is simply prohibitive.
Corn-based ethanol has been an even sillier idea. It is, of course, supported heavily by the agricultural lobby in what my colleague, Robert Bryce, has routinely called the ethanol scam. With a very adverse impact on food prices, this ethanol is both highly inefficient (under current processes, it takes 1.6 litres of gasoline equivalent to produce one litre of ethanol) and much ado about nothing. If we use all of the corn grown in the United States to produce motor vehicle ethanol, it would amount to about 20 per cent of our gasoline demand.
There is nothing in using ethanol by up to 10 per cent as a gasoline oxygenate to boost the performance of conventional gasoline. This is what the now discredited tetra-ethyl lead did until the late-1970s, followed by MTBE (Methyl tert-butyl ether), also recently outlawed. But the corn ethanol supporters want 15 per cent ethanol and more.
The Celanese announcement is being promoted as a means to produce ethanol for industrial use, but it can throw the entire corn-based ethanol industry on its head. It can readily fulfill global needs using an economically-advantageous process resorting to any corn-based ethanol.
Celanese will start its production in energy-hungry China, first with one and then two industrial complexes each producing about 400,000 tons of fuel per year. Combined, they could provide over 25 per cent of China's current demand of three million tons per year (demand is growing by 10 per cent annually).
The feedstock for the Chinese plants will be coal. There are two benefits: It uses an abundant local energy source and it converts it into a highly environmentally-benign fuel. Burning coal, by comparison, furthers China's already insidious pollution problem. The U.S. will also benefit. A 40,000-ton industrial ethanol production unit will also be built in Celanese's Clear Lake, Texas, facility, using natural gas as the feedstock. And this will not be the end of it.
A real energy solution
It is trite to count the multiple wins that the Celanese announcement entails. It is a real energy solution; it is a deployment of the quintessential American strength - technological ingenuity; it is an obvious reversal of the trends where China mostly sells to the U.S.; and, it is poised to put a stop to the preposterous corn-based ethanol idea.
It is also transparent where the next step is likely to be for Celanese. As its chairman and CEO, Dave Weidman, said: "While we are focusing on industrial uses at this time, we are also exploring opportunities to apply this technology to fuel ethanol applications in regions where the commercial environment is supportive."
Michael Economides is Editor in Chief of the Energy Tribune and among America's leading energy analysts.
