Where can I buy butanol:

 Sharon Haydu
Sales Associate Ashland Chemicals
1842 Enterprise Pkwy Twinsburg, OH 44087
Phone: 330.405.0461 x221
Fax: 330,405.0482

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FAQ:   Waste Stream

 One final question:

 What kind of waste disposal will be necessary for Butanol production using your process; Bacterium laced or not?

 Basically the same waste stream one would have from any particular biomass process used in ethanol production.

 We can not feed stock animals more than 20% of their diet and when mass producing “Our Fuel of the Future – Butanol”, there will be more biomass (Distillers Grains, spent Stovers, including Switch Grass, and probably lacing of Kudzu) waste generated than we can feed all the animals. 

 This spent matter should be placed under the ground from which it came.  Any Bacterium in a Fermentation waste stream will be beneficial to the earth from which they came. 

 This waste handling process builds the “Tilth”, encouraging aerobic and anaerobic life and creating a “Healthy Soil” for our children’s future.  Deep “Top Soil” is as essential for life on this sphere as it is for us to stop Global Warming.

Diesel Blends:

From John:

<< Butyl alcohol can be mixed with diesel fuel in virtually any concentration. It does not separate as water is added or as the temperature is decreased. Further, butyl alcohol does not significantly change the cetane number of diesel fuel. In blends with diesel fuel, butyl alcohol tends to reduce the solidification temperature of the fuel at low temperatures.>>

 This information came from, http://www.ext.colostate.edu/pubs/farmmgt/05010.html  . 

I wish they had a performance comparison with different diesel butanol blends. I have not seen such a study.

             There is a company OTD whose main claim to fame is their ability to blend 7.7% ethanol with diesel fuel.
The Government seems to think their blend would be better for their use. Butanol would appear to be far superior, especially since Khosla, Branson, Woolsey, BP, DuPont etc are interested.  OTD information links,

http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=143822&p=irol-newsArticle_Print&ID=840359&highlight=

and

http://www.marketwire.com/mw/release_html_b1?release_id=174129 .

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As with any burgeoning technology we have to do pilot plant studies and then get into production.  We are looking at - at least 18-36 months.  Our primary goal is large facility engineering and construction.

A tremendous amount of information is available on the site: www.butanol.com  There are downloads and hyperlinks throughout.  Any underlined word will generally take you somewhere with more information.  The cursor will turn to a finger when placed over these highlighted and underlined areas -- just click.

Someday we see retrofitting existing ethanol plants but not tomorrow.  I feel at that time we will also have turn key platforms to apply to small applications and farmsteads.

Spread the word...

Butanol is a simple solution to our future without oil and Global Warming.

Just change what we make from growing matter.

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 Status of your project? 

Just like my progress in the past 15 years slowly but surely in small methodical steps.

 We still need to conserve and strive for cheaper sources of energy, solar and wind.

 Visit our web site - I will give regular updates

    We have several corn to corn syrup plants operated in town.  I was wondering if some of the waste from these agrobusinesses might be a suitable raw material for your process.  If so, what part and how might I find out what they do with waste currently?

14 pounds of sugar per gallon is require for either butanol or ethanol.  It does not matter where that sugar comes from.  Any sugar or starch or biomass waste stream from an agribusiness will do.  What is left over is either DDG’s, animal food or waste devoid of sugars that can be drilled back into the earth to build tilth and thereby use less fertilizer next year.

    Do you have a rough timeline as to when your business would be able to license or sell turn key solutions to turn different feed stocks (whey, corn, distillers grain and solubles, etc) into butanol?

As with any burgeoning technology we have to do pilot plant studies and then get into production.  We are looking at - at least 18-36 months.  Someday we see retrofitting ethanol plants but not tomorrow.  I feel at that time we will also have turn key platforms to apply to small applications and farmsteads.

    Are any government agencies, industry groups or individuals
  testing butanol in a  reformer to produce hydrogen for fuel cells?

To my knowledge they are still looking at only methanol and ethanol.  I am just now posting a page on the net "A butanol economy" that discusses this safe fuel cell fuel aspect.  Maybe someone out there will realize how safe butanol is and how easy it is to reform for its hydrogen. 

    Are any government agencies testing butanol as a motor fuel.

 None.  You can not currently find butanol, biobutanol or alternative fuel butanol on the NREL or DOE data base.   There has been no long term research! 

    Have any industry groups or individuals tested butanol as a motor fuel.

None -- Maybe VW since I turned one of their prime engineers onto it last year when I went through Phoenix, but no one is stepping forward...

Now that BP and DuPont have voiced their entrance into the biobutanol market there will be a lot more research going on.

    Will using butanol as a motor fuel void the warranty on new cars in this country?

Probably !  All the testing they have done on all the other alternative fuels still has to be done for butanol.  Years from now they might cover butanol under the warranty. 

Since I came off the Trip Cross Country last year my Buick still runs on about 25-50% butanol all the time.  I get better performance and gas mileage.  It would have coughed by now...

    Are there any long term issues for engine parts or process equipment exposed to high concentrations of butanol, like corrosion or hydrogen embrittlement or something? 

I can not answer that.  Only long term testing by researchers will resolve that question. 

    How would 100% butanol perform in cold (say -30C) weather engine start tests?

Add a little gasoline !  Other solutions for this cold starting will come.  This is a minor problem as we go down the butanol path.  We solved quite a few, more difficult problems over the past 30 years, for ethanol applications.  Butanols' will be far easier ! 

    Your web site suggests that butanol will run in diesel engines, are there studies or examples of this?

Butanol can be blended with diesel I do not think you can use it straight.  No one has really looked at this case since World War II.

I think everyone will be surprised once funding helps look at "Butyl-Diesel™".

 
What are your Trade Marks?

 Since 1996 Environmental Energy Inc.  has used the following Trade-Marks.

 ButylFuel™ - any blend of 100% pure to 1% of butanol.

 Butylizer™ - A biorefinery which produces butanol - a turnkey unit.

 BioButanol™ - butanol made from biomass

Home-Brew- Small Scale

Every branch of science has at some point been confronted by a daunting question that stumps progress for years, even decades.  The low yield of butanol from the conventional fermentation process is very uneconomical and has kept butanol as an alternative off the radar. The low yield and difficulty of recovery are the other reasons.

If the production of Butanol “only” were simple we would have had it on the alternative fuels table a long time ago. Butanol is associated with the production of acetone, iso-propanol and ethanol, acetic, propionic and butyric acids, each requires sugar and our process eliminates all the ancillary products. 

As a farm boy I am always working to make a “home-brew” – class room – farm application possible.  Butanol belongs to the public – God/Nature does all the work.  My current effort is developing a patent that might be applicable. Our goal is to eventually enable the farmer with 50-1,000 acres to make our fuel.

Anaerobic fermentation is different than yeast ethanol or soy biodiesel created in a bucket at home.  Sterility, contamination and oxygen sensitivity are the difficult problems.  A gas chromatograph is an essential part of the process so you can see what is going on – it is an expensive piece of equipment and most home owners can’t afford it.  I hope to create one specifically designed for our process but still it would be ~$3,000 much better than the $30,000 some of them cost today. All these problems are being addressed in time.  The bacteria are available from American Type Culture Collection  www.atcc.org

Just getting the bacteria is one thing – bringing them up and feeding them and working with them involves skills that a person needs to be developed.  As we begin to manufacture more on a large scale I see our company being able to hold classes to teach others those skills. 

The other things is “Patience” because of microbial lag phase and the ever present problem of the process going south by not being sterile, oxygen free or contaminated and having to start over.  There are some very critical steps involved – especially sterilization.  Bacteria, fungus, and many other critters are in the air and can contaminate the process on start up.  But once the process is up and running it is continuous and runs for a year or more, unlike ethanol’s or biodiesel’s batch processes, which are advertised in kits for “home-brew” in many magazines.  I wish it were simpler but if it were it would be common practice today and we would not be looking at highly modified cars and all the problems associated with the other alternatives.

Sugar

Whatever is being done for ethanol’s sources of sugars (Feed Stock – Material Handling) is the same for butanol. 

The more variety of biomass sources as food for the microbes the better all our futures will be.

It takes 14 pounds of sugar - no matter the source to make either a gallon of ethanol, which does not replaces gas in your car today, or a gallon of butanol which does. 

One pound starch =’s approximately one pound of sugar.

Sugars can be obtained from corn, switch grass; sugar beats or cane, algae, trees, Kudzu and most anything that grows on the planet.

It is just the costs of processing the biomass into digestible sugars that varies so much from biomass source to biomass source.

There is a lot of research into corn, algae, cellulose, lignin, switch grass, trees, paper, stovers and many other feedstocks, look for it, at possibly a local college library, NREL, DOE and other data bases.

http://butanol.com/docs/2002_NREL_Lignin.pdf