The US Energy Department's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) is working with Ecopetrol, the largest oil company in Colombia, to process the residue from sugar cane and palm oil harvesting into fuel ethanol for blending with gasoline.
The agreement between NREL and Ecopetrol aims to improve the conversion process for bagasse and to analyze the economic potential of commercial production of biofuel from these materials. The agreement will also include some limited study on palm rachis.
The US$2.3 million 18-month project is being funded by Ecopetrol, which is using NREL for its expertise on conversion of biomass, its compositional analysis and techno-economic analysis capabilities, and facilities. NREL has a pilot plant at its Golden, Colorado campus that can process up to one ton per day of biomass.
Colombia has an abundance of biomass in the form of sugar cane. The bagasse currently is burned to produce steam that drives turbines and electricity generators, but Ecopetrol is hoping to get more value out of it than that.
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