Potential for Converting Wood into Plastics

The production of chemicals from renewable feedstocks is becoming an attractive area of investment for industries in the framework of a more sustainable economy. From a technical point of view, a large fraction of industrial chemicals and materials from fossil resources can be replaced by their bio‐based counterparts. Nevertheless, fossil‐based chemistry is still dominant because of optimized production processes and lower costs. The best approach to maximize the valorization of biomass is the processing of biological feedstocks in integrated biorefineries where both bio‐based chemicals and energy carriers can be produced, similar to a traditional petroleum refinery. The challenge is to prove, together with the technical and economic feasibility, an environmental feasibility, in terms of lower impact over the entire production chain. In this review, potential renewable substrates, conversion pathways, and target molecules are carefully investigated with reference to the most recent technological advancements. Potential environmental impacts and benefits over the life cycle of products are also reviewed. While an economic and technical feasibility can be, and sometimes has been already, reached, the same is not true yet for environmental feasibility, where several issues still need to be explored and the risk for burden shift is not negligible. The aim of this review is to provide an overview of the opportunities and constraints related to the transition from petroleum to biomass chemistry and to draw a roadmap of the most sustainable technologies and promising biomass value chains, screening in parallel their environmental implications, toward a market implementation of bio‐based chemistry. © 2016 Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd

Assessing the impacts of light synthetic crude oil on microbial communities within Laurentian Great Lakes’ sediment habitats

Since 2006, the government of Alberta has tried to increase the volume of raw bitumen upgraded and refined in the province. More specifically, the Alberta Petroleum Marketing Commission (APMC) and Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. (CNRL) have entered into agreements with a facility northeast of Edmonton called the North West Redwater (NWR) Sturgeon Refinery. The NWR Sturgeon Refinery is designed to process 79,000 barrels per day (bpd) of feedstock, consisting of 50,000 bpd of bitumen and 29,000 bpd of diluent (referred to as dilbit). The refinery will produce petroleum products consisting of approximately 40,000 bpd of low sulphur diesel, 28,000 bpd of diluent and 13,000 bpd of other lighter petroleum products. It will also be able to capture 1.2 million tonnes per year of carbon dioxide emitted from the refinery’s operations. This captured carbon dioxide will be compressed, put into a pipeline and then injected into an existing oil field in order to achieve increased production of crude oil (referred to as enhanced oil recovery or EOR). It is the first refinery built in Canada since 1984, and the first one in Canada to refine bitumen into petroleum products such as diesel fuel. It differs from the upgrader built in Lloydminster which only upgrades bitumen into synthetic crude oil that requires further refining at a conventional refinery in order to produce petroleum products. This paper gives a description of the structure of this support by APMC and CNRL using a mechanism whereby those two parties agree to enter into tolling agreements to process the diluted bitumen feedstock into refined petroleum products for sale. Under the tolling agreement, APMC and CNRL retain ownership of the diluted bitumen as it is refined into petroleum products. APMC and CNRL then sell such petroleum products, and pay a tolling fee to the NWR Sturgeon Refinery for the refining service provided. The paper also uses an economic model in Excel to give a projection of the economics of this facility for the first full year of operation. The objective is to put numbers to a project that has been the subject of much qualitative discussion. The Excel economic model contains base case assumptions for a number of variables such as the capital cost of the refinery, the financing costs associated with such capital costs, the operating costs of the refinery, the cost of the diluted bitumen feedstock and the price of the petroleum products produced by and sold from the refinery. Based on these base case assumptions, the Excel economic model shows that in the first full year of operation of the NWR Sturgeon Refinery in 2019, the two toll-paying entities, APMC and CNRL, are projected to lose a cash amount of about $24 million (about $1 per barrel of diluted bitumen supplied). This loss is based on a comparison to the toll payers’ alternative of just selling the diluted bitumen feedstock at market prices. The paper then uses the economic model to do a sensitivity analysis to show the effect of a lower or higher price of diluted bitumen feedstock, as well as the effect of a lower or higher price of the produced petroleum products. If the cost of the diluted bitumen feedstock were lower, or the price of the petroleum products were higher, then APMC and CNRL would earn a profit. If the converse occurred (feedstock costs higher or petroleum product price lower), then the loss to APMC and CNRL would be greater than $24 million. Finally, the paper attempts to create a template for governments to use when they consider whether or not to provide financial assistance to various projects.

1. Introduction Nordin, Simeh, Shariff and Baharim (2007), proved in their studies that there is a relationship between the price of crude oil and biodiesel. The results showed that the increase in oil prices during the period of the last few years encouraged some countries to begin to pay attention to the use of alternative fuels, among others from the plant (biodiesel). The increase of petroleum will increase biodiesel production. Ramli, Abas, R. and Ayatollah (2007) in their studies proved that the crude oil price is affected by biodiesel, the first derivative product of palm oil which produces palm oil (known as crude palm oil or abbreviated with CPO), utilizing biodiesel which comes from palm oil, the results showed that the biodiesel increase has affected the crude palm oil price. The development industries based on this CPO in addition directed to produce food products such as cooking oil, margarine, shortening, Cocoa Butter subtitute (CBS), and vegetable ghee, it is also directed to produce non-food products, such as industrial oleochemical primary (fatty acid, fatty alcohol, glycerin) and other oleochemical derivatives, namely surfactants, cosmetics, farmacy, and bioenergy. Oil palm plantations and palm oil industry as a means to improve the socio-economic conditions of rural communities through the implementation of operations Inti-Plasma programs (Zen et al., 2006). When the world oil price increases, many countries use CPO as raw material of bio-diesel fuel as a substitute (Karuppuswamy, Sundararaj and Elangovan, 2007; Pociovalisteanu et al., 2010; Thalassinos and Politis, 2012; Thalassinos et al., 2012). These conditions favor the use of biodiesel as a variety of targets alternatives to fossil energy applied to several countries in the world (Kennerly and Neely, 2003). In 2020, the European Union set a target of 10 percent biofuels of raw palm oil. Zen, Barlow and Gondowarsito (2006) studied that the crude oil prices have an influence on the palm oil as pointed out by Ahuja and Khamba (2008). It has been proved that there is an influence of biodiesel on the production of palm oil. The research result on the biodiesel and its impact on crude palm oil and its implications for palm oil, showed that the growing number of biodiesel has a positive and significant effect towards crude oil palm as well as the implications for the production of palm oil rises (Ashayeri, 2007). The increase of demand and the use of palm oil as a fuel is expected to cause disruption of the availability of CPO as raw materials for food, especially palm oil (Chand and Shirvani, 2000; Enkawa and Schvaneveldt, 2001). Novelty of this research is to add the existing variables into world oil price of the biodiesel and its impact on crude palm oil and its effect on oil palm. 2. Theory and Hypothesis As Santoso (2014) has pointed out bio-diesel is a natural renewable energy source that made from biomass or vegetable oil. As the bio-diesel has physical properties very similar to petroleum derived diesel fuel or ADO (Automobile Diesel Oil), bio-diesel has been used for motor engine since 1880's. In 1920's, bio-diesel production infrastructure has been nearly eliminated since diesel engine manufacturers altered their engine to utilize petroleum diesel that was much cheaper than Bio-diesel production. Recently, an increase on oil consumption, crude oil price, and ADO import have lead to consider bio-diesel utilization for transportation sector in Indonesia. An increase of the crude oil price that lead to a decreasing cost differential for bio-diesel production, bio-diesel utilization as alternative energy source in Indonesia is a real possibility. Some environmental impact concerns would also increase the bio-diesel utilization prospect. Oil palm is a highly profitable crop adapted to the humid tropics and the area devoted to this crop is likely to expand significantly in the future. It has many environmentally favourable attributes over its full life cycle. …

BackgroundItaly can augment its profit from biorefinery products by altering the operation of digesters or different designs to obtain more precious bioproducts like volatile fatty acids (VFAs) than biogas from organic municipal solid waste. In this context, recognizing the process stability and outputs through operational interventions and its technical and economic feasibility is a critical issue. Hence, this study involves an anaerobic digester in Treviso in northern Italy.ObjectiveThis research compares a novel line, consisting of pretreatment, acidogenic fermentation, and anaerobic digestion, with single-step anaerobic digestion regarding financial profit and surplus energy. Therefore, a mass flow model was created and refined based on the outputs from the experimental and numerical studies. These studies examine the influence of hydraulic retention time (HRT), pretreatment, biochar addition, and fine-tuned feedstock/inoculum (FS/IN) ratio on bioproducts and operational parameters.MethodsVFA concentration, VFA weight ratio distribution, and biogas yield were quantified by gas chromatography. A t test was then conducted to analyze the significance of dissimilar HRTs in changing the VFA content. Further, a feasible biochar dosage was identified for an assumed FS/IN ratio with an adequately long HRT using the first-order rate model. Accordingly, the parameters for a mass flow model were adopted for 70,000 population equivalents to determine the payback period and surplus energy for two scenarios. We also explored the effectiveness of amendments in improving the process kinetics.ResultsBoth HRTs were identical concerning the ratio of VFA/soluble chemical oxygen demand (0.88 kg/kg) and VFA weight ratio distribution: mainly, acetic acid (40%), butyric acid (24%), and caproic acid (17%). However, a significantly higher mean VFA content was confirmed for an HRT of 4.5 days than the quantity for an HRT of 3 days (30.77, SD 2.82 vs 27.66, SD 2.45 g–soluble chemical oxygen demand/L), using a t test (t8=−2.68; P=.03; CI=95%). In this research, 83% of the fermented volatile solids were converted into biogas to obtain a specific methane (CH4) production of 0.133 CH4-Nm3/kg–volatile solids. While biochar addition improved only the maximum methane content by 20% (86% volumetric basis [v/v]), the FS/IN ratio of 0.3 volatile solid basis with thermal plus fermentative pretreatment improved the hydrolysis rate substantially (0.57 vs 0.07, 1/d). Furthermore, the biochar dosage of 0.12 g-biochar/g–volatile solids with an HRT of 20 days was identified as a feasible solution. Principally, the payback period for our novel line would be almost 2 years with surplus energy of 2251 megajoules [MJ] per day compared to 45 years and 21,567 MJ per day for single-step anaerobic digestion.ConclusionsThis research elaborates on the advantage of the refined novel line over the single-step anaerobic digestion and confirms its financial and technical feasibility. Further, changing the HRT and other amendments significantly raised the VFA concentration and the process kinetics and stability.

The availability of raw material for harvest and use by wood-consuming mills in northern New England is a concern of the region's forest products community. Shifting populations, as well as shifting priorities for and values of land uses in the region, have placed pressures on landowners to subdivide and sell their forestland, resulting in concern about future wood supply in some areas of the region. Wood procurement managers and professional loggers, key participants in supplying raw material to wood-consuming mills, were surveyed to better understand the relationships between phenomena such as land development and the availability of logging and wood procurement opportunities. Results suggested concern about sprawl among approximately one-half of the logger respondents in the region, particularly in New Hampshire, where 60% of respondents indicated that there will be less logging in their area in 10 years because of sprawl. Three-quarters of procurement managers said that uncertainty about the future of the region's wood supply was an important or very important barrier to maintaining or expanding their businesses, and over one-half of respondents from New Hampshire indicated that too much development was a barrier. In addition, sawmills receiving at least one-half of their raw material from nonindustrial private forests were more concerned about their future wood supply than those that did not. However, stumpage prices and regulations were cited as important factors affecting mills' wood supplies more often than factors related to population pressures, such as sprawl, development, and shrinking woodlot sizes.

Technical, economic, and environmental feasibility of alternative fuel heavy-duty vehicles in Iceland

The urgently needed phasing out of fossil resources requires that we should critically assess for which applications (virgin) carbon-based materials are essential and in which cases it is possible to dematerialise. Nevertheless, it is anticipated that a large fraction of the functionalities that are currently supplied by carbon-based materials will remain essential in the decades to come. Therefore, a transition to new high performance materials and products made from non-fossil renewable feedstock needs to be realized. In the past decade, various studies have pointed out that this transition can be realised by the utilisation of three particular alternative sources, exclusively. These are biomass, recycled materials and carbon dioxide (CO2). Out of these three pathways, the development of processes for the conversion of CO2 into polymers that can be used for plastics is lagging behind. This lag can largely be explained by the technical challenges that still exist for sourcing and subsequent conversion of CO2. As a result, the currently available technologies are not yet cost-effective. Nevertheless, driven by the increasing demand for fossil-free resources and increasing levels of CO2 taxation, a wide range of new chemical and microbial conversion technologies have been developed in the past decade, some of which are currently being investigated at an industrial level. This study identifies and assesses the most relevant sources and conversion routes for CO2-based materials from a technical perspective. A specific focus is placed on the conversion of CO2 into polymers that can be used in packaging, building and textile applications. The present study identifies specific CO2-to-product pathways and the five parameters that determine the technical, economic and ecologic feasibility of these routes, those being: • The CO2 content of the polymer, i.e., the fraction of carbon that originates from CO2 • The energy required for the conversion process(es) • The technical feasibility and yield of the conversion process which is reflected in the technology readiness level (TRL) number • The oxidation state of the carbon within the target polymer • The lifetime of a product that determines the potential of CO2 capture and storage. Based on the performed assessment, the electrochemical conversion of CO2 can be considered one of the most promising routes. Furthermore, all ‘CO2-to-product’ routes score low on the energy required. Currently, most CO2 conversion processes have a low TRL, which is not surprising given the relative new research area. Although multiple polymers (polyethylene, polypropylene and polyglycolic acid) score excellent on the CO2 content in the polymer, only applications in building and construction have a high CO2 capture potential due to their long lifespan. Fast moving consumer goods, like clothing and food packaging, have a short lifespan, and although these materials are partially recycled, there are inherent recycling losses. Overall, these products are considered to be a less effective carbon sink and as such, using CO2 as feedstock will have a lower impact for these applications. Finally, it is concluded that the economic potential of each of the identified CO2 conversion methods heavily relies on whether the technology can mature quickly and significantly, and on the extent to which they can be coupled to excess renewable energy streams in the future. Additionally, a heavy driver in the economics of these solutions will depend on the taxation of the carbon offset that is mitigated by a specific route and whether the potential for long term carbon capture will be taken into account for such taxation.

Emerging interaction of artificial intelligence with basic materials and oil & gas companies: A comparative look at the Islamic vs. conventional markets

Summary Asphaltene-stabilized water-in-oil (W/O) emulsions can cause severe problems during oil production and transportation. These emulsions are broken by adding a demulsifying agent at a suitable concentration (CD*) to obtain the optimal formulation, with minimal emulsion stability (stability*). Herein, we studied, from a phenomenological point of view, the performance of two demulsifiers on W/O emulsion breaking with high asphaltene content. A very simple polyethoxylated nonylphenol demulsifier (6EO) and a complex commercial demulsifier (COD) were studied. The influence of the chemical nature of the oil phase on the performance of the demulsifiers was evaluated. The emulsion stability* and CD* values of W/O systems of heavy crude oil diluted in cyclohexane (Systems A and B) were compared to W/O emulsions composed by a heavy crude oil diluted in heavy naphtha or in an aromatic synthetic crude oil as the oil phase (Systems C and D). The results show that demulsifier performance improves significantly when the crude oil is diluted in heavy naphtha and in aromatic synthetic crude oil, obtaining unstable W/O emulsions (rupture time of 10−2–10−1 minutes). In the latter cases, the CD* value is significantly lower and with a wide area of low emulsion stability compared to systems formulated with crude oil diluted in cyclohexane. The mechanisms that generate this type of behavior are discussed and strategies to increase performance and robustness analyzed.

This study involves an examination of the technical and economic feasibility of using raw gas from an underground coal gasification facility as feedstock for methanol synthesis, and producing M-gasoline from the methanol. It differs from previous studies in considering facilities smaller than those previously studied. Addressed also is the economic and technical feasibility of using equipment from existing ammonia plants for the production of methanol. Ammonia and methanol plants are very similar in type of equipment used and plant layout. Consequently, it is possible to convert an existing ammonia plant into a methanol facility. Existing ammonia and methanol plants which contain equipment that might be utilized with UCG all use natural gas for feedstock. The processing steps in these plants can be divided into unit operations which are described. The product price analysis shows that significant economies of scale exist for the larger of the two facility sizes considered in this study. The economies of scale are evident for both the methanol/M-gasoline and methanol-only facilities. Compared to current market prices, the calculated product prices for the 4000 BPD and 12,000 BPD methanol-only facilities are within the range of competitiveness with the prices of conventionally produced methanol. The product prices calculated for the 12,000 BPD methanol/4910 BPD M-gasoline facility are, under the most optimistic assumptions, 50% higher than the current market price for unleaded gasoline.

<div class="htmlview paragraph">A five-vehicle, 64 000-km test with 7.45 litre V-8 engines was conducted to determine if synthetic engine oils provided performance sufficiently superior to that of conventional engine oils to permit longer oil change intervals. The results show better performance in two areas of deposit control; inferior performance with respect to wear protection; and essentially equivalent performance in the areas of fuel and oil economies. Based on these data, it was concluded that synthetic engine oils do not provide the necessary performance required to safely recommend their use for extended oil change intervals. In addition, a cost analysis shows that the use of synthetic engine oils, even at a change interval of 32 000 km, will essentially double the customers' cost compared with conventional engine oils at GM's current 12 000-km change interval.</div>

UMKM Kamasa Kerupuk Klanting needs to implement clean production which aims to reduce waste and increase the efficiency of using raw materials. The objective of the research was to identify the implementation of clean production in Kerupuk Klanting processing and to analyze alternative implementations of clean production economically and technically at UMKM Kamasa Kerupuk Klanting. These stages of the research were identification of the production process, analysis of net production opportunities, analysis of economic and technical feasibility and election priority cleaner production opportunities with paired comparison questionnaires. Processing of Kerupuk Klanting of cassava-based 80 kg produces an average of 40.25 kg of Kerupuk Klanting and produces 20.4124 kg of solid waste and 525 kg of liquid waste. The recommended net production opportunities are processing cassava peels into compost, processing cassava peels into liquid organic fertilizer and reducing the use of clean water in the cassava washing process by collecting water in the sink and cleaning using a cloth, using sacks directly at the mouth of the grating machine is expected to hold grated cassava spilled on the machine can be recovered, utilization of squeezed wastewater as raw material for cassava starch (tapioca), and use of wood pellets as a substitute for firewood. Priority assessment of clean production opportunities using Expert Choice is Reducing the use of clean water in the cassava washing process by collecting water in the sink and cleaning using a cloth.

Nowadays, as the technology behind solar photovoltaic systems has been significantly improved, along with a significant decrease in costs, grid-connected photovoltaic systems are becoming an important option to reach a low-carbon energy transition. The high cost of electricity consumed at the Technical University of Cluj-Napoca represented a good reason for the university to increase its energy efficiency by adopting and increasing energy consumption from renewable energy sources. This paper assesses the technical, economic, and environmental feasibility of deploying four photovoltaic systems at the aforementioned university situated in the Northwestern part of Romania, according to the Romanian renewable energy legislation. PVSOL software has been used to estimate the performance of photovoltaic installations. The results indicated that the most viable distributed generation system is the one with a capacity of 100 kW, meeting approximately 23 percent of university electricity needs, and at the same time, reducing carbon dioxide emissions by approximately 460 tons. A sensitivity analysis has been performed to evaluate the effect of several critical parameters on the PV system’s economic feasibility. The results provide valuable decision-making information regarding the buildings’ solar potential for other universities, supporting the transition to solar energy.

The Clean Air Act Amendments of 1970 established a national program of pollution control to be administered jointly by the states and the Federal Environmental Protection Agency. National air quality standards have not yet been attained, however, because the legality of EPA approval and enforcement of state antipollution plans that impose economic hardship on industry is still undetermined. In this article, the author argues that Congress intended air quality standards to be met even at significant cost to industry, including shutdown, and develops a framework for decision making in challenges to administrative action under the Clean Air Act. Economic and technical feasibility, he concludes, is generally irrelevant to Federal approval of state implementation plans and does not constitute a defense to Federal or state enforcement of those plans.