Bio fuel

Introduction

With the increasing oil demand and barrel price, linked with a more constraining environmental regulation, the production of fuels, mainly gasoline and diesel, becomes more and more complex. Indeed, the USA and EU market are driven by new environment standards aiming at reducing the pollution during production process as also reaching clean fuel standards for the current decade 2005-2015.

To maintain their margin, Refiners have to optimise their main blending operations. For gasoline or middle distillates blending operations, it is important to proactively evaluate the contribution of blending components to the quality of the final blend.

It is now crucial due to the new components arriving in the refineries off-sites, such as Bio Ethanol, Bio Ester (like FAME= Fatty Acid Methyl Esther) for which the response in a given pool is not easily assessed.

With unique Topnir technology, Refiners can now access quickly and accurately the response of any existing or new bio fuel blending components in their pool as well as to characterize any commercial Grade of clean fuel using those components. Topnir brings the immediate and adequate characterisation to optimise the recipes in order to avoid lack of production while saving money on give-away and certifying regulation compliance.

Biorefining

For Bio Gasoline, Refiners are using, or planning to use, ethanol as part of the manufacturing of gasoline finished products. As Ethanol is generally added outside of the refinery fence, these refineries are producing BOB grades (Blendstock for Oxygenated Blends) such that, when a fixed, pre-defined, percentage of ethanol will be later incorporated in a depot or at the truck loading station, the finished product shall be on specification.

Ethanol is not a classical blending component due to the non-linearity observed on some properties when mixed at low percentage into a BOB. Most of the properties of the gasoline finished product will be impacted in a non-linear way when adding ethanol, such as RVP, distillation curve, and to a lesser extent octane number.

The main factors which impact the response of ethanol addition to gasoline finished properties are typically:
• Chemical composition of the BOB
• Initial properties of the BOB
• Initial content of oxygenated products in the BOB, incl. ethanol itself
• Amount of ethanol to be added in the BOB
For Diesel, Bio Esters are used in Bio Diesel which requires characterizing the commercial grades with such components.

Topnir has a dedicated tool, called Optiblend, specifically designed to deal with non-linear behaviour in gasoline and diesel blending applications. Optiblend is being used for Ethanol addition in BOB blending. Optiblend allows a Blending Engineer with optimizing the initial recipe of a BOB based upon the following input:
• Target volume to be blended
• Gasoline specifications
• Tank hill volume, spectrum and quality
• Components qualities, spectra and available volumes
• Components price

Optiblend is also used also for Diesel Blending to optimize the level of additives to be added in the blend to reach the specification without spending extra money on additive consumption.

Among the different benefits of our solutions for Bio Fuels, using either ethanol or Bio ester, we can list the following points:
• Insures maximum efficiency of the blending optimization loop with Typical savings around 1 - 3 M$/Year per pool
• Re blend avoiding
• Demurrage costs reduction
• Inventory reduction and yearly production increase Savings: 1 M$/Year

Biodiesel

What does it mean? It means that the market of biodiesel is a reality, stronger and stronger each day. To respond to that reality, first generation biodiesel plants are being built now, while the second generation design is still at a laboratory scale.
As it enters it industrial step, biodiesel production has now to respect criteria of product quality, as well as profitability. In one hand, ASTM D6751 is the tool that bio-refiners use as a reference for product quality parameters, and in the other hand, process control is the tool that enables producers to maintain and increment their margin. This process control is based on chemical and physical analysis of the different streams of the unit, which unified are a real “photo” of the current working state of the production unit, enabling to react and correct any observed deviation. The more precise the photo, the more efficient the correction. Conclusion is that analysis methods are the key to a performing plant, respecting both quality and profitability aims.

The used analysis methods have to be precise and rapid to be effective. From that, it can easily deduced three ideas: the equipment has to be online, and have to respect as often as possible ASTM reproducibility and repeatability criteria, and have to provide their user with the most complete “photo” of the plant (i.e. the most complete range of analysis available).

Not all conventional analyzers are online, not all give results equal or below the ASTM range. And from them, not all are able to give instant response.

From its 15 years of field experience in online refined products analysis, TopNir brings to you the solution you’re waiting for: with a single, real-time, ASTM precise analyzer, you’ll be able to monitor all the streams from your biodiesel plant.

Our analyzer is able to analyse the following streams, delivering results every minute:

FEED:

CRUDE (ANIMAL OR VEGETAL) OIL:

Acidity, Peroxyde Index, Anidine Index, DOB Index

REFINED OIL:

Acidity, Soaps, Peroxyde value, composition of fatty acid

FINAL PRODUCTS:

BIODIESEL:

Soap, Esthers content, Mono/Di/Tri Glycerides, Total Glycerol, Free glycerol, Methanol/Ethanol content, Density, Viscosity, Flash point, CFPP, Cetan Number, TBP, TAN, Iodine Index, Cloud point, Pour point, Linoleic acid Alquilester, Carbon residue, Polyunsaturated methyl-ether, Polyunsaturated ethyl-ether.

CRUDE/ REFINED GLYCERIN:

Methanol/Ethanol content, Acidity, MONG

FATTY ACID:

Neutral oil content

In top of that, TopNir technology can also be used at laboratory with additional property that is water content determination in all previously quoted products and the alcohol used in the transestherification process (methanol, ethanol).

Benefits of our solution for Bio Diesel are numerous; the following points are part of it:
• Real-time process control will use real-time analysis values enabling the plant to use its full transformation capacity and to adapt to the feed stock variability.
• Insures biodiesel quality delivered to the customer avoiding product correction before selling.
• Maintenance costs hugely reduced because one TopNir analyzer will make the work of many conventional ones.

Provides you with typical savings of 1 to 2 Million USD!

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