Shell turns to wood chips and straw in search for the road fuel of the future-by Carl Mortished
A new road fuel made from wood chips and straw will be launched in Europe later this year from a pilot plant developed by Shell and Choren Industries, the German biofuel company. The synthetic diesel, made using a novel biomass-to-liquids (BTL) process, will shift the biodiesel industry into a higher gear by using waste plant material instead of valuable food crops. The pilot plant, near Freiberg, will produce 15,000 tonnes per year of synthetic diesel, which Choren has dubbed Sunfuel. Construction of a much bigger plant in Schleswig-Holstein, costing €500 million and capable of producing 200,000 tonnes of BTL, will begin next year in an effort to quickly bring the product up to commercial scale.
Massive political and regulatory pressure is building on energy companies to find low-carbon alternatives to conventional road fuels. However, increased use of first-generation biofuels, such as ethanol and biodiesel made from rape-seed or palmoil, has caused the price of food crops, such as corn, to soar.
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