A leading renewable energy research firm yesterday (30th September) championed the role played by platinum group metals in the development of commercially-viable advanced biofuels.

The national renewable fuels standard (RFS) in the US has prescribed the production of 600 million gallons of advanced biofuel in 2009, including 500 million gallons of biomass-based diesel.

Now Stu Porter, Manager of Business Development and Projects at BBI International, has highlighted the advent of hydrogenation-derived renewable diesel (HDRD) reactions in the creation process.

He explained that the HDRD method differs from conventional biodiesel production as it involves hydrogen and a catalyst such as platinum, palladium, rhodium or ruthenium, while also using almost identical feedstocks.

Speaking at the three-day 2008 Advanced Biofuels Workshop and Trade Show in Minneapolis, Mr Porter also noted that HDRD has a number of additional advantages over biodiesel.

In particular, it does not need a special tank for storage and can be sent via pipelines to blending sites or retail distribution centres, while HDRD plants also tend to be larger, thus helping to achieve economies of scale.

Source:

ABW: Industry races to develop advanced biofuels (30/09/08)

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