We are back in the U.S. now, and this is the final post for our Brazil blog. Over the past 10 days, Erika and I have chronicled a tour of Brazilian biofuels research centers and production facilities, along with a concluding symposium that set a goal of developing a shared road map for Brazilian-U.S. collaboration on biofuels research.

I could recap the highlights of our trip here, but I think it’s better simply to direct you to the beginning of the blog and let you take a few minutes to read through the entries yourself. You also can follow this link to read a C&EN story on the symposium.

One thing I never got around to doing in the blog is to point out the many historical similarities between Brazil and the U.S. Both countries began as colonies to European powers and were taken advantage of for their natural resources and abundant land suitable for agriculture. The colonists and their expansion essentially destroyed the cultures of the indigenous peoples and assimilated them into a European-style culture—a mostly British influence in the U.S. and an Iberian influence in Brazil.

Both countries played a significant part in the African slave trade. Both countries gained their independence, the U.S. in 1776 and Brazil in 1822, and both abolished slavery in the second half of the 19th century. Both countries have struggled with civil rights for minorities, immigration, and equal rights for all citizens.

One difference between the two countries is the outcome: the U.S. has emerged as the leading economic power in the world, whereas Brazil continues to climb to the top as an “advanced developing country.”

The important similarity between the two countries now is that the U.S. and Brazil are world leaders in agriculture at a time when biomass conversion to fuels and chemicals is set to change the global economy. I think it’s safe to say that very good people in both countries are working to address issues that are critical for moving biofuels development forward, but Brazil is well ahead of the U.S. in its efforts.

Edwin S. Olson (shown left, speaking), a professor at the University of North Dakota and chair of the ACS Division of Fuel Chemistry, gave me a succinct analysis on this point. The Brazilians are visionary and innovative on biofuels, whereas in the U.S., people are too conservative, Olson told me about halfway through our tour. I interpret this as meaning that in Brazil everyone seems willing to work together to systematically develop a biofuels industry, but in the U.S., the capitalist approach in which different entities look out for their own interests—driven by the desire to protect intellectual property—is stifling innovation.

VARIETY A fuel station in Brazil offers gasolina and alcool (ethanol).

During the symposium, Gale A. Buchanan, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s undersecretary for research, education, and economics, emphasized that “Brazil’s ethanol program is a model for the world.” His presence at the meeting is an important sign that the Bush Administration recognizes the need for the U.S. to learn and move forward. Buchanan was slated to meet with his Brazilian counterparts after the symposium, and he is scheduled to return to Brazil in two weeks for additional meetings. “The opportunity for the U.S. and Brazil to work together is very exciting,” Buchanan said.

Appropriating funding to advance biofuels development will be critical for the U.S., several members of the U.S. delegation pointed out. Buchanan acknowledged that need, with the caveat that it will be scientists who will need to drive progress by showing the value of their work to Congress and the President. He added that one hurdle will be bureaucracy in the federal government. In the case of biofuels, many government agencies have a stake—USDA, the Department of Transportation, the Department of Energy, the Environmental Protection Agency, and others. Interagency cooperation is not easy, he said.

Finally, one point that went unstated throughout much of our Brazilian adventure is that the entire reason biofuels are necessary is to establish lasting global sustainability. “Using biomass is not the solution; we have to use biomass carefully,” pointed out Luis P. Ramos of the Federal University of Paraná during the symposium. “We need to build models involving life-cycle analysis to build a sustainable world.” He is right. We have no reason to develop biofuels if we are only going to degrade the environment in the process. Brazil is showing that this is possible, and the U.S. can follow that lead. The U.S. cannot merely copy Brazil’s model, however. We must adapt it to fit U.S. needs, infrastructure, and environmental conditions.

There are a lot of people to thank for making this blog possible. First, there’s Brad Miller of ACS’s Office of International Activities (shown right), who invited Erika and me to take part. Our Brazilian host Paulo Vieira and tour coordinators graduate student Junia Pereira and postdoc Alessandra Ambrozim of the Federal University of São Carlos took care of all our needs in Brazil (the U.S. delegation with these three Brazilian hosts are shown below). On the U.S. side, the blog would not have happened without the staff of C&EN Online and especially C&EN Assistant Editor Kimberly Dunham, who worked through technical issues to edit and post all the entries.

Thanks for reading. Esperamos que tenham gostado! Valeu!

The scientists who came together this week in Brazil work in many areas of chemistry, as well as engineering, agronomy, and plant genetics. But I noticed that they were united not just by an interest in biofuels, but also by an ideal of sustainability. Whether they were discussing green chemistry or improving feedstocks, they were enthusiastic about using renewable resources in a sustainable way.

I don’t know whether everyone here would label themselves as an environmentalist, but this is certainly an environmental ideal.

One aspect of this sustainable vision is for biofuels to provide not only a carbon-neutral but also a clean, nonpolluting source of energy. To achieve this goal, scientists need to first understand how the pollution created by burning biofuels differs from that created by petroleum-based fuels. Then, those emissions must be minimized.

One enterprising Ph.D. student in Brazil is working on this issue by measuring the emissions produced by a variety of biodiesel blends. Her work earned special recognition in a student poster competition here at the symposium.

Lílian Lefol Nani Guarieiro, a Ph.D. student at the Universidade Federal da Bahia, won with her poster, “Determination of C1-C4 Carbonyl Compounds from Car Engine Exhaust Using Biodiesel/Diesel Mixtures.” She is shown in the photo to the left with her poster, which was selected from among those submitted by graduate students from Brazil at the poster session Wednesday night.

Guarieiro is the Brazilian half of a pair of graduate students who will begin developing their own international collaborations. Dante Simonetti was selected as the American student, and he claimed as his prize the chance to attend this tour and biofuels symposium (see Steve’s entry, “Dante’s Catalysis”).

Guarieiro and her graduate adviser, Jailson Bittencourt de Andrade (shown in the photo below), will receive a trip to attend the ACS national meeting in Boston this August, paid for by Bradley Miller’s National Science Foundation Discovery Corps project. There, they will present the poster at a biofuels symposium and will be recognized at a dinner hosted jointly by the petroleum and fuels divisions of ACS.

Guarieiro’s project examined aldehyde emissions from various biodiesel blends made from soy oil. She found that some emissions tripled when the percentage of biodiesel in a blend was 20% or greater. Acrolein and acetaldehyde emission levels increased significantly, and formaldehyde also showed this pattern. Propanol and butanol had smaller increases.

The results point to an important issue, Guarieiro says, because these emissions could adversely affect air quality. The volatile organic compounds can contribute to smog formation, and formaldehyde and acrolein are mutagenic.

Most surprising was how abruptly emissions increased at the 20% blend ratio (see figure below) compared with blends containing 10% biodiesel or less. The chemistry behind the sharp increase is not entirely clear, but Guarieiro and de Andrade point out that biodiesel contains fatty acids that are absent in petroleum diesel, and this leads to different chemical reactions in various blends.

The project focused on emissions that are unregulated in Brazil and in much of the world. “We need to investigate this more,” Guarieiro says. She is currently studying other biodiesel blends made with sunflower and castor oil, and her next step will be to study the chemistry behind the pattern she observed. She hopes to eventually find ways to reduce emissions, perhaps by improving catalysts for biodiesel systems.

“She’s doing work that is extremely important for the development of biofuels,” says Edwin Olson, a biofuels chemist from the University of North Dakota and one of the judges. Also judging the competition were Dante Simonetti of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and Kathleen Hapeman of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Congratulations, Lílian!

There hasn’t been a day on our Brazil trip that I haven’t been amazed by the talent and warm-heartedness of our Brazilian hosts. As Erika related in a post the other day (Beyond Biowillie), during our tour of Brazil, we have been whisked around São Paulo state in a fleet of biodiesel cars that are part of a test program run by Miguel J. Dabdoub and his group at the University of São Paulo, Ribeirão Preto. We have been living the experiment, so to speak.

Erika and I have ended up riding most of the time with Daniel A. Bortoleto and Vinicius D. Sellani, shown above with their car (Sellani left, Bortoleto right). We enjoyed polite conversation with these two unassuming graduate students during our excursions. One day, Vinicius turned around from the front seat and asked if we knew about their cooking oil recycling program. I figured they must do what a number of college students in the U.S. do and collect some used cooking oil from a local restaurant to make biodiesel to run their own cars. But it turned out there is a little more to the story.

Bortoleto and Sellani, working with fellow students Márcia A. Rampin and Cássio P. da Silva, run a program called “Biodiesel Em Casa E Nas Escolas,” which translates to “Biodiesel At Home And At School.” It’s an educational venture led by Bortoleto that started about 18 months ago to teach environmental awareness and the value of biodiesel to elementary through high school students. Dabdoub is proud of his students for this effort, he told me, because they came up with the idea on their own and turned it into a reality.

There are several components to the program. The graduate students visit schools to educate teachers and students. In the photo below, Sellani addresses one class (photos courtesy of Daniel Bortoleto). They provide a pamphlet explaining the program for students to take home to their parents. To add a little fun, they created the character Bill Bio as a mascot, shown at the end of this post in a flyer they distribute to the public.

The key element of their program is collecting used cooking oil. Students are encouraged to bring in used oil to school rather than letting their parents pour it down the drain or out on the ground, which is harmful to the environment. As a reward, the students get to take home 1 L of new cooking oil for every 4 L of oil they bring to school. And students who bring in lots of oil win prizes. Some students with their teacher are shown below.

So far, the program has reached 25,000 students in the Ribeirão Preto region, Bortoleto says. The graduate students also collect used cooking oil from school cafeterias and local restaurants, including 11 McDonald’s locations. The recycling program is supported by several companies, such as the Carrefour supermarket chain and a local Coca-Cola distributor.

Bortoleto and Sellani help collect 20,000 L of used oil per month. They convert it into biodiesel that is blended with petroleum-derived diesel and used to power the collecting van (shown below in front of a school).

They also use the biodiesel for other vehicles in the lab’s fleet. The biodiesel contains some impurities, so it’s not used in the test cars we rode around in. Those cars need to run on diesel made from virgin oil because of precision emissions testing the lab is doing. But the Coca-Cola distributor uses a 5% biodiesel blend (B5) in 145 delivery trucks, and the campus buses run on a 30% biodiesel blend (B30).

The program is just another example of the ingenuity of Brazilians in promoting biofuels. Perhaps some enterprising U.S. graduate students have created programs like this. If not, it’s a great model to follow.

Filed by Erika Engelhaupt

When it comes to solving energy problems, Foster Agblevor thinks big. As a bioresource engineer at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, he designs chemical and industrial processes that make the most of natural resources. His goal: to create energy and biobased products while making waste a thing of the past. He’s been an energetic member of our traveling group in Brazil, with a quick smile and lots of questions as he looks for opportunities to work with Brazilian scientists and companies.

“There is no such thing as waste in biomass,” Agblevor says. “As soon as you find a use for something, it is a resource.” All that’s required is a shift in point of view, he adds.

One project recently took Agblevor to Egypt to find resources in an unusual problem. When he arrived, Agblevor was amazed to see lush green crops growing in the desert thanks to advanced irrigation techniques. The problem, scientists there told him, is that crop residues won’t decompose in the dry climate. Residues pile up, and farmers have to either add more of their valuable water to get them to rot or burn them. Burning has created terrible air quality, and the piles are a waste problem. 

First, Agblevor suggested using the biomass to make fuel, but the scientists in Egypt weren’t particularly interested in a new fuel supply. Next, Agblevor proposed that they could turn these residues into a variety of biobased products. The idea was a hit. The team is working now to turn rice straw, banana stems, and cotton gin waste into microcrystalline cellulose, which can be used in pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, casting molds, and food.

Agblevor discussed this and other facets of his work when he outlined biomass conversion processes and challenges on Wednesday at a joint ACS and Brazilian Chemical Society (SBQ) biofuels symposium, which precedes the annual SBQ conference. The symposium focused on biomass conversion to biofuels and other materials, and it took place in the picturesque resort town of Águas de Lindóia, about 180 km north of São Paulo.

“We have to think beyond fuels,” Agblevor said during his presentation. “We have to think of the whole system.” In ethanol production, that means finding ways to make the most of residues such as bagasse (leftover stems) and of residues from the distilling process. Many other leftovers, such as manure and forestry residues, hold promise too. Using lignocellulosic biomass, the “tough stuff” of plants, remains a challenge. One approach discussed at this meeting is pyrolysis (oxygen-free heating) to break these materials down.

For example, Agblevor described pyrolyzing chicken litter (manure) to create a slow-release fertilizer. The new fertilizer replaces direct applications of high-phosphorus litter to fields, which can cause a phosphorus pulse that leads to eutrophication problems.Another approach to using lignocellulosic materials is to thermochemically break them down into a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen known as syngas. This gas mixture can then be combined with catalysts to build a wide variety of compounds, including alcohols and hydrocarbons such as diesel.

Agblevor says the trip to Brazil has been fruitful. Brazil is a country “rich in biomass and in expertise,” he says, and he was particularly impressed with the level of integration among biofuel market sectors in Brazil (see C&EN Senior Editor Steve Ritter’s blog entry “Factories To Factories”). The company Dedini Indústrias de Base, for example, has the engineering expertise to both design and build plants. The company can even build plants such as its new Barralcool facility that produces bioethanol, biodiesel, and bioelectricity.

Agblevor (right, at Dedini with part of a distillation unit) hopes to help bring this kind of systems thinking home to the U.S. “We want to solve these [energy] problems in an environmentally friendly way,” Agblevor says. “I don’t want to solve one problem and create another.” When using crop residues for fuels and products, for example, he cautioned that removing too much biomass would reduce levels of soil organic matter, leading to lower crop yields.

Homegrown solutions that meet regional needs and account for local growing conditions are best, Agblevor says. He hails from Ghana, a country that currently faces a huge garbage disposal problem. Always an optimist, Agblevor hopes to help turn this problem into yet another resource.

Filed by Steve Ritter

One of the most striking achievements of Brazil’s biofuels industry is the vision of scientists, government officials, business leaders, and educators to work together to develop an integrated approach for future growth.

For example, agronomists are working to prepare new plant cultivars that produce more oil or more sugar through selective breeding and genetic modification. These scientists are also working to adapt some of Brazil’s many species of plants that typically have not been used in agriculture. Soil scientists are conducting research to ensure that the country’s increase in agricultural production doesn’t destroy the fragile soil ecology. The reddish soil is rich for growing crops (right), but the high mineral content needs to be balanced with organic carbon. Thus, no-till planting techniques that return plant residues to the soil are being encouraged.

As we witnessed in our explorations of bioethanol and biodiesel plants this past week, companies are squeezing out every possible drop of energy from sugarcane, beef production, and soybeans and other crops to produce fuels, feed, and fiber.

Before we head to the resort town of Águas de Lindóia for the two-day symposium that will end our Brazilian adventure, two last stops are NG Metalúrgica and Dedini Indústrias de Base, both located in Piracicaba. These companies build the machinery, chemical reactors, distillation columns, and electricity generators that go into bioethanol and biodiesel factories. Most people might not think about this sector of the biofuels industry, but the Brazilians have, and they consider improving engineering just as important as any other piece of the biofuels puzzle.

NG, with about 1,000 employees, is running at full capacity, noted Fausto Schmidt, an applications engineer who gave us an overview and tour of the workshops. The company designs and builds steam turbines (right) to power bioethanol plants, as well as large distillation columns—a column in the process of being assembled is shown below.

The company’s sales are expected to hit $150 million this year, Schmidt said. The company has its equipment installed in many countries around the world, with major contracts in South America and Southeast Asia. It has installed turnkey ethanol plants—complete systems ready to operate—at a few sites in the U.S.

Dedini likewise places an emphasis on biofuels and is working full-tilt to supply boilers, distillation equipment, and turnkey systems. The company has grown from about 2,300 employees in 2000 to about 4,600 employees today, noted chemical engineer Hélio G. Filho, who briefed our group on the company’s activities.

“We are a factory that makes factories, with an emphasis on biofuels,” Filho said. About 50% of Dedini’s business is in sugar refining and alcohol production, but the company also builds systems for biodiesel, breweries, pulp and paper, and wastewater treatment.

The enthusiasm of Schmidt and Filho is common these days in Brazil as the country lives the “triple revolution” of bioelectricity, bioethanol, and biodiesel.

The caipirinha may qualify as Brazil’s national drink, but the super-strong coffee known as cafezinho (ca-fay-zheen-yo) is the most popular. Morning, noon, and night (as a sleep aid!), Brazilians sip cafezinho, often just called café,  from tiny white cups with saucers.

Here at the biofuels symposium, cups of Brazilian coffee act as another type of biofuel, fueling the scientists as they discuss their latest research challenges.

And it’s no wonder the drink’s so popular; Brazil is the world’s largest producer of coffee, growing about a quarter of the world’s supply. Much of the coffee here is grown in low-lying regions, unlike in many other coffee-growing areas, and it currently grows in the warmer climate of northern Brazil. But Brazil’s production of coffee and other crops could face challenges in a warming world.

A recent study by scientists at University of Campinas and EMBRAPA, Brazil’s agricultural research agency, projected that climate change could lead to a significant decline in Brazil’s coffee output, from 32 million 60-kg bags this year to 2.4 million in 2100 with a 5.8 ^oC increase in global average temperature. Although warmer temperatures would allow crops to move southward, the researchers say dry conditions would limit production. Research on coffee varieties that are more tolerant to heat and drought are ongoing at EMBRAPA, which is a partner in the collaboration project that led to this biofuels symposium.

Many researchers here have noted that climate change is also a consideration for biofuels production. They are quick to point out that biofuels could aid in reducing greenhouse gas emissions through the use of renewable resources. But some of them have also pointed out that there could be challenges for production of feedstocks for biofuel production that need to be accounted for in planning for the future. As climate patterns shift, some of the crops currently used for biofuels may grow better or worse in certain regions.

I’ll be keeping my fingers crossed that the world will be able to maintain its coffee and sugar supplies. For now, my attention is drawn to learning how to enjoy the black jewel, which comes in two forms: “com açúcar” (with sugar) and “sem açúcar” (without).

The best way to drink your brew is to pour a small cup, the size of an espresso, and add some of that other major export, pure Brazilian sugar, to taste. To do it like a local, drink your coffee very sweet—each sugar packet here contains 5 g of sugar, as much as 5 times more than U.S. packets. Then, stir swiftly with a tiny paddle to get all that sweetness to dissolve, and enjoy. You won’t find milk or cream on the table.

The best way to look like a befuddled American: do what I did at the University of Campinas, and pour yourself a big cup of joe in a glass meant for water. I was surprised by how strong the coffee was, and as I wondered whether I could finish the whole thing, I looked around the room and noticed all the Brazilian professors and students sipping gingerly from what looked like tiny plastic medicine cups. That wasn’t my most graceful moment, but now I’m drinking my cafezinhos like a pro.

Before coming to Brazil, I was inundated by suggestions that I had to try a caipirinha, Brazilians’ favorite alcoholic mixed drink. The caipirinha is a simple cocktail made from sugar, limes, and cachaça, which is a type of rough-tasting brandy made from—what else—sugarcane. It’s similar to rum.

On Sunday afternoon, the U.S.-Brazilian biofuels delegation was invited to attend a barbeque hosted by chemists from the Federal University of São Carlos. There was plenty of succulent grilled beef and chicken, manioc (cassava), fresh oranges and limes picked straight off the tree, and of course, caipirinhas.

Being a group of chemists, the discussion naturally turned to the chemistry behind the potent caipirinhas. I learned quite a bit from our Brazilian hosts and then ventured on my own to learn more.

Cachaça is made just like ethanol, as we saw earlier at the Santa Elisa plant we visited. The sugarcane is crushed to remove the juice, some water is evaporated to concentrate the sugar, and yeasts ferment the sugar to ethanol. A single distillation leads to cachaça containing 40–45% alcohol.

Distillers have a variety of ways of preparing cachaça, several of our Brazilian friends related. Stainless steel vessels are used by some processors to make clear, unaged liquor, which is typically used to make caipirinhas. Copper pots are also used to make cachaça, with the copper reportedly imparting subtle differences in the flavor.

Some types of cachaça have a golden color, which comes from aging in wooden barrels (many types of native wood are used) or by adding herbs, such as orange tree leaves. Someone mentioned that distillers sometimes bury the barrels in the ground for aging, but no one seems to know what enhancement that might provide. The golden cachaça typically is drunk straight up in a small glass, like brandy.

Anyway, with a bottle of cachaça at hand, making caipirinhas is easy: To a pitcher or glass full of ice, add cachaça, lots of lime slices, and lots of sugar. The sugar should settle out thickly on the bottom of your glass, then with a stirrer or straw, you mix in as much sugar as you like with the lime and cachaça.

But nothing is so simple in Brazil, as João Batista and Paulo C. Vieira, natural products chemists at São Carlos, explained. Some people prefer leaving the peel on the lime slices that go into the drink, whereas others insist on removing the peel or just squeezing in juice and pulp. The outer peel of citrus fruits such as limes contains limonene, a terpene. And the inner part of the peel contains flavonoids, which are a little bitter. These compounds add flavor to the drink, which some people like, and others don’t.

And there are about a half-dozen varieties of limes that grow in Brazil, Batista added. For example, one type we tried looks more like an orange (shown right), which, in typical Brazilian fashion, makes things complicated but more interesting when it comes to doing something like making caipirinhas.

Although there are many ways to make caipirinhas, there is only one good way to enjoy them—relaxing with friends and colleagues, as demonstrated by graduate student Daniel A. Bortoleto (opening photo) of the University of São Paulo, Ribeirão Preto, after a long day on our biofuels tour.

This is a vast land, about the size of the continental U.S., and words like verdant and lush can barely describe the way things grow here. The rich growing conditions have shaped a country that is both modern and intensely agricultural at the same time. Today, Brazil faces many choices about how to make the best use of its ecological fortune, and researchers here say that with some foresight, biofuels production can be done without sacrificing the landscape.

Brazil’s diversity is almost overwhelming to a U.S. traveler. For example, on Sunday, we visited the chácara (a small farm used as a getaway) of Fatima Silva, a chemistry professor at the Federal University of São Carlos, and her husband, Leonel. They hosted us for a Sunday barbecue, and their small backyard overflowed with oranges, several kinds of limes, pineapples, bananas, papaya—and chickens as colorful and varied as the fruit.

Large swaths of Brazil’s land are farmed now for soybeans (22 million hectares, where 1 hectare is roughly 2.5 acres) and sugarcane (6.5 million hectares), but the mix of crops has shifted as economic conditions changed over the years since colonial control. Sugarcane was originally planted only in the relatively poor soils of southern Brazil, because the fertile soils of central and northern Brazil were seen as too valuable to waste on a scrappy plant like sugarcane, which grows in fairly nutrient-poor conditions.

The state of São Paulo illustrates this shifting land use. For many years, the major crop here was coffee. In the mid-20th century, coffee started to decline, and by the 1970s, high soy prices had farmers planting soy everywhere they could. But now, soy has been mostly pushed out of São Paulo by sugarcane, today’s most profitable crop. Soy is grown now mainly in central western and northeastern Brazil, and cane is expanding as far as the northeast.

The African palm, which is an imported species along with cane and soy, is making inroads too. It’s planted across the central part of the country for palm oil production. Although palms take several years to start producing seeds, they’re popular because they produce more than 10 times more oil per hectare compared with soy.

Soybeans sprouted across Brazil’s landscape in the 20th century, originally planted in southern Brazil but pushing northward over the years. Large agricultural companies bought land in states such as Pará, in Amazonia, causing some deforestation directly and indirectly by shifting land use in the region.

Brazil’s government has increased the amount of protected land in the Amazon basin, but environmental groups are concerned and are working to protect forests from being eaten away at the edges by soy fields.

There is concern here that growing demand for crops like sugarcane and soy could encourage farmers to clear more land or could cause biofuels to compete with food crops. The scientists on this trip say that’s not necessary. There are still about 100 million hectares of already cleared land that “can be used for agriculture without affecting the food supply,” says Alvaro Macedo da Silva, director of the EMBRAPA (Brazilian department of agriculture) Agricultural Instrumentation unit. Others note that there is great potential in agroforestry, or farming crops with trees, and in the use of native plants that can be grown in mixed use instead of by monoculture and don’t require large amounts of fertilizers and pesticides.

Indirect land use effects, however, are still something to pay attention to, says researcher Tor Fossan, who is working on a project in Brazil to analyze future biofuels scenarios at the International Energy Initiative, an international nonprofit group that advocates sustainable energy approaches. For example, the expansion of biofuels crops could encroach on current cattle pastures and lead to higher concentrations of cattle on some lands. A certification program for sustainable biofuels could help make sure that all impacts are considered, he says.

Brazil’s government is also encouraging research on biodiesel production from plants such as the native Jatropha curcas and others. Miguel Dabdoub, director of the Biodiesel Brasil program and the Laboratory for Development of Clean Technology, is also studying the potential of a native tree called pequi and a common local palm tree called babaçu. The seeds of babaçu are already harvested for their high content of lauric acid, used in cosmetics, and the shells contain an untapped source of energy that could possibly be used in biodiesel.

All of the biofuel producers we’ve met here say they want to be part of an environmentally sustainable energy future for Brazil, and for the world. The rest of the world is watching and hoping to see how it can be done.

ON THE HORIZON Biocapital’s biodiesel plant in Charqueada is one of the first of many anticipated Brazilian facilities that will make biodiesel from vegetable oil and/or animal fat. Ironically, the plant is viewed across a sea of sugarcane, the source of ethanol, Brazil’s other biofuel.

Following up on our intriguing visit to an ethanol facility a couple of days ago, today we toured Biocapital’s biodiesel plant in Charqueada. We were greeted by the constantly smiling Roberto Engels, president of Biocapital. Engels indeed has much to smile about, as the future for biodiesel looks bright in Brazil.

Engels and his staff walked us through the facility and explained the company’s biodiesel production process. The Biocapital plant, which has been producing biodiesel for only a few months, was converted from an existing plant that was used to produce essential oils.

Biocapital currently uses fat rendered from cattle (beef tallow) as the starting material. Brazil is the world leader in beef production, and right now, the animal fat is the least expensive source of triglycerides for making biodiesel.

Foster Agblevor of Virginia Tech (shown right, from left) and Miguel Dabdoub of the University of São Paulo checked out a sample of the solidified beef tallow. The facility could use soybean or other plant oils, Engels noted, and in the future, that choice will be driven by market factors. The choice of starting materials for other biodiesel plants will be driven by both cost and regional availability.

The beef tallow is stored in large tanks (left) before being loaded into a reactor. The Biocapital plant has two reactors, one with a capacity of 18 metric tons (below) and another with a capacity of 33 metric tons. Diesel fuel is a mixture of long-chain fatty acid esters, and in the case of biodiesel, they are derived by esterifying triglycerides. The Biocapital plant, like most biodiesel plants, uses 2% sodium methoxide as a transesterification catalyst and methanol as a solvent. The reactor is mechanically stirred with a giant paddle, and in about 30 minutes, the biodiesel is ready.

The product mixture is transferred to a separator tank (left), where crude biodiesel separates from the methanol, residual sodium methoxide, and the glycerin by-product.

Biodiesel is purified by vacuum distillation (280 ºC at 15 torr) to give the final product. A close-up of one of the distillation columns is shown at right. The Biocapital plant is a bit unusual in this regard, as most biodiesel plants rinse the biodiesel with water to remove impurities rather than distill it. The distillation columns were left over from the original plant, and the process engineers decided to make good use of them to produce an extra-pure biodiesel, as witnessed by ACS’s Brad Miller (below).

The by-product glycerin, still containing the sodium methoxide residue, is sent to storage tanks and periodically loaded onto tanker trucks to be sold. The methanol is recycled for subsequent batches.

In Biocapital’s quality-control lab, Paulo Vieira of the Federal University of São Carlos (shown right, from left), Roseli Ferrari of Biocapital, and William (Rusty) Sutterlin of Renewable Alternatives pose with a minireactor that Ferrari uses to make test runs of biodiesel production parameters and to test the biodiesel and glycerin products.

The Biocapital plant also has a set of boilers that are powered in part by burning residual material from the reactor and distillation columns. These boilers produce steam for heating the distillation columns.

Biocapital’s plant currently has capacity to produce 60,000 metric tons of biodiesel per year, which is stored in tanks (above) until it is trucked to a distributor. But a capacity expansion is starting to take shape adjacent to the current facility. It will increase capacity up to 250,000 metric tons per year by next year, Engels noted.

Below, Biocapital plant manager Vilemar Magalhaes, Dabdoub, and Engels (left to right) chat after our tour, with a view of the distillation columns in the background. Down the road, Biocapital plans to become an integrated biofuels company, producing both biodiesel and bioethanol. The ethanol eventually could replace the petroleum-derived methanol in the process, but for now, methanol is cheaper.

Petroleum-based diesel accounts for 57% of Brazil’s transportation fuel market, Engels pointed out to our U.S.-Brazilian group. Gasoline, gasoline/ethanol blends, and pure ethanol supply most of the remainder. Brazil currently imports about 15% of its diesel, but the progressive nation is moving quickly to remedy that situation, Engels noted. By 2008, Brazilian diesel must include 2% biodiesel; by 2013, the mandate increases to 5%. Still, biodiesel accounts for only a few percent of Brazil’s 5.2 billion L per day diesel consumption. For companies in Brazil, and likewise in the U.S., the biodiesel future is wide open.

Filed by Erika Engelhaupt

If you don’t know your biodiesel from your bioassay, this blog’s for you.

To bone up on the basic chemistry behind biodiesel, I turned to one of the pros in our tour group: William (Rusty) Sutterlin (shown, right), chief executive officer of Renewable Alternatives, based in Columbia, Mo. As we toured the Biocapital biodiesel refinery in Charqueada today, Sutterlin was always handy with a clear explanation of what was happening inside the tangle of pipes and tanks. So after the tour, I snagged him and sat down for a crash course in methyl esters and a peek inside his company, which turns a by-product from biodiesel production into nontoxic antifreeze, or propylene glycol.

In the beginning, all biodiesel starts with an oil or a fat. Almost anything from used French fry vegetable oil to pork fat will work. The key is that oils (liquid) and fats (solid) store lots of energy, and biofuels are all about getting that energy back out to power vehicles down the highway.

Oils and fats share a basic structure, with a glycerin backbone supporting fatty acid chains. It looks something like this:

The carbon atoms running down the left-hand side form the glycerin backbone, and the bits hanging on are the fatty acids, where the R represents a long hydrocarbon chain.

In biodiesel production, methanol solvent and a catalyst­—usually sodium methoxide (NaOCH₃)—are added to the oil or fat. The ensuing reaction is called a transesterification, because one kind of ester (a molecule with an oxygen bridging two carbons and a double-bonded oxygen) is turned into another ester. In this case, the glycerin backbone peels away from the fatty acids like the skin off fried chicken. Methyl groups (CH₃) from the catalyst replace each of the glycerin carbon atoms, leaving you with three methyl esters:

Each methyl ester is a biodiesel molecule. It’s as simple as that. The glycerin left behind settles out and can be used for consumer products like moisturizers or made into something else (more on that in a moment).

There are a few complications in the real world, of course. For one thing, if you use fairly “dirty” oils or fats to start with (say, 10-week-old grease from a McDonald’s fryer), you’ll have a lot of free fatty acids floating around. These fatty acids will undergo an acid-base reaction with the sodium methoxide, producing methanol and a fatty acid salt, better known as a soap. That soap then has to be separated out of the diesel (and no, you can’t just drive a French fry-powered bubble-mobile).

Companies around the world are working to make biodiesel from fats and oils that otherwise would be waste products, and even the glycerin produced as a by-product doesn’t have to go to waste. Sutterlin wraps up our biodiesel lesson with the latest news from his company, which is doing just that.

Sutterlin started Renewable Alternatives in 2003 to make phase-change materials­: compounds that have basic chemical properties that are handy for storing heat. For example, a coffee cup that keeps your coffee at the perfect temperature will be out soon. Sutterlin and his collaborators at the University of Missouri noticed that with the biodiesel boom, a lot of glycerin was coming onto the market. A glut of refined glycerin caused prices for the commodity to crash from $1.10 per lb to 30 cents per lb.

Sutterlin recognized a cheap resource immediately and looked for a way to turn glycerin into a useful product. Sutterlin’s group realized that stripping one hydroxyl group (-OH) from glycerin would yield propylene glycol, and the team set out to improve on the existing conversion process.

Renewable Alternatives licensed the process to U.K.-based Senergy, and that company is building a plant that will start producing propylene glycol by the end of the year. Besides antifreeze, propylene glycol is used in many products such as cosmetics and lubricants.

The test’s on Friday. Class over!