Chemical Engineering July 2013 - 15

(Continued from p. 15)
CHEMENTATOR
STORY NAME
(Continued from p. 15)
IMPROVED CORROSION CONTROL
(Continued from p. 12)
condensate system when fed to the boiler feedwater. "
Use of Steamate LSA has commenced in a small number
of commercial refineries, and the results have been positive,
Rossi says. For example, because of the lower risk of
corrosion and deposits in distillation towers, petroleum refiners
are able to run at lower top temperatures to maximize
yields of middle distillates, such as diesel and gasoline,
from crude oil.
Bio-butanol scaleup
moves ahead with trials . . .
I
n April development tests, Cobalt Technologies (Cobalt;
Mountain View, Calif; www.cobalttech.com) produced
n-butanol at the fermentation scale of 100 m3 per run,
demonstrating lower production cost than butanol produced
from petroleum. This represents production that is
a factor of 10 larger than previous trials conducted at the
National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL; Golden,
Colo.; www.nrel.gov), and one-tenth of full-scale commercial
production. The trials were conducted at a site in
Florida owned by biofuels company LS9 Inc. (San Francisco,
Calif.; www.ls9.com)
Cobalt is exploring opportunities in the U.S. for retrofitting
an existing corn ethanol plant to eventually produce
butanol from available biomass, explains Cobalt
CEO Bob Mayer.
Developed using a range of biomass sources, including
sugarcane bagasse, woody biomass, and other agricultural
residuals, the Cobalt bio-butanol process involves a carbohydrate
extraction process that is integrated with fermentation
and distillation. Cobalt employs fermentation strains
specially selected for their ability to metabolize both fiveand
six-carbon sugars. The company has developed proprietary
bioreactor technology that will allow continuous fermentation,
as well as an advanced batch process.
By combining integrated extraction, continuous fermentation
and strain selection technologies with an efficient,
reduced-energy distillation process and low-cost biomass,
the company can produce butanol at savings of 40-60%
compared to petroleum-derived butanol, Mayer says.
. . . and a bio-butadiene plant is planned
O
n the heels of its successful scaleup of bio-butanol, Cobalt
is looking for pathways to use that molecule as a building
block for other products. The company has announced
plans to build the first bio-butadiene plant in Asia. Projected
to come onstream in 2017, the plant will utilize traditional
chemical catalysis technology to take bio-butanol
to butadiene.
Cobalt CEO Bob Mayer says the company is developing
an intellectual property package for the bio-butadiene that
will be marketed worldwide. As a key raw material for automobile
tires and other products, butadiene's worldwide
market is eight times larger than the $5-billion annual
market for butanol, Mayer notes.
■
Partner with
the Best
With over 50 independent subsidiaries
and more than 220 engineering
and sales offi ces spread across the
world, SAMSON ensures the safety
and environmental compatibility of
your plants on any continent.
To offer the full range of high-quality
control equipment used in industrial
processes, SAMSON has brought
together highly specialized companies
to form the SAMSON GROUP.
SAMSON AG · MESS- UND REGELTECHNIK
Weismüllerstraße 3
60314 Frankfurt am Main · Germany
Phone: +49 69 4009-0 · Fax: +49 69 4009-1507
E-mail: samson@samson.de · www.samson.de
SAMSON GROUP · www.samsongroup.net
CHEMICAL ENGINEERING WWW.CHE.COM JULY 2013 15
(Continues on p. 19)
A01120EN
Circle 19 on p. 56 or go to adlinks.che.com/45774-19
http://www.cobalttech.com http://www.nrel.gov http://www.ls9.com http://adlinks.che.com/45774-19 http://www.samson.de http://www.samsongroup.net http://WWW.CHE.COM
Chemical Engineering July 2013

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Chemical Engineering July 2013
