by Ron Kotrba (Biodiesel Magazine) After working with a handful of producers over the past several years to prove the technical and economic viability of liquid enzymatic biodiesel processing, Novozymes is making its Eversa enzymatic processing solution commercially available to the biodiesel industry.
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Eversa can work with a broad range of fats, oils and greases, but initial focus has been on used cooking oil, distillers corn oil and fatty acid distillates.
Making the change from a chemical catalyst to the enzymatic process requires retrofitting in existing plants. Biodiesel producers looking to use Eversa must invest time and resources to switch to enzymatic processing. Novozymes’ engineering partners estimate that the resulting improved process economy indicates a payback time of three years or less, depending on the plant setup and regional feedstock savings potential.
Global biodiesel plant builder Desmet Ballestra says enzymatic processing will prove popular with biodiesel producers. “The enzymatic process is simple and does not need much pretreatment,” said Marc Kellens, group technical director at Desmet Ballestra. “It is the best alternative for modifying existing plants to enable them to incorporate difficult-to-convert oils. In conventional plants, 80 to 85 percent of the costs of biodiesel are linked to feedstock cost. So the more you are able to convert a cheaper feedstock into biodiesel, the more profitable the business is. The enzymatic process makes it possible to convert waste oils into biodiesel with relatively low capital expenditure by retrofitting a plant.”
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The enzymatic process eliminates the need for sodium methoxide.
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Novozymes teamed up with Piedmont Biofuels several years ago to develop the technology, and subsequently the enzyme maker has worked with Viesel Fuel, Blue Sun Biodiesel, WB Services (Green Energy Products and Adkins Energy) and its latest customer, Buster Biofuels, a 5 MMgy plant under construction in San Diego. READ MORE and MORE (Novozymes) and MORE (Ethanol Producer Magazine) and MORE (Fleets and Fuels)