Nanosphere catalyst could improve biodiesel production

Victor Lin, an Iowa State University professor of chemistry and a program director for the U.S. Department of Energy's Ames Laboratory has developed a catalyst based on nanospheres that could revolutionize the way biodiesel is produced. The particles and the precise chemistry filling the channels that run through them could make production cheaper, faster and less toxic.

The new catalyst could also produce a cleaner fuel and a cleaner glycerol co-product. And it could be used in existing biodiesel plants. The technology allows efficient conversion of vegetable oils or animal fats into fuel by loading the nanospheres with acidic catalysts to react with the free fatty acids and basic catalysts to react with the oils. The nanoparticles are recyclable.

This technology could change how biodiesel is produced [...] and could make production more economical and more environmentally friendly. - Victor Lin, Iowa State University professor of chemistry

Lin is working with Mohr Davidow Ventures, an early stage venture capital firm based in Menlo Park, California, the Iowa State University Research Foundation and three members of his research team to establish a startup company to produce, develop and market the biodiesel technology he invented at Iowa State.

The company, Catilin Inc., is just getting started in Ames. Catilin employees are now working out of two labs and a small office in the Roy J. Carver Co-Laboratory on the Iowa State campus. The company will also build a biodiesel pilot plant at the Iowa Energy Center's Biomass Energy Conversion Facility in Nevada. Lin said the company's goal over the next 18 months is to produce enough of the nanosphere catalysts to increase biodiesel production from a lab scale to a pilot-plant scale of 300 gallons per day.

Lin will work with three company researchers and co-founders to develop and demonstrate the biodiesel technology and production process. They are Project Manager Jennifer Nieweg, who will earn a doctorate in chemistry from Iowa State this summer; Research Scientist Yang Cai, who earned a doctorate in chemistry from Iowa State in 2004 and worked on campus as a post-doctoral research associate; and Research Scientist Carla Wilkinson, a former Iowa State post-doctoral research associate and a former faculty member at Centro Universitario UNIVATES in Brazil:
bioenergy :: biofuels :: energy :: sustainability :: biodiesel :: glycerol :: catalyst :: nanotechnology ::

Larry Lenhart, the president and chief executive officer of Catilin, said the company is now up and running. It has a research history. It has employees. It has facilities. It has money in the bank. And he said the company has proven technology to work with. The nanosphere-based catalyst reacts vegetable oils and animal fats with methanol to produce biodiesel. All that makes biodiesel production "dramatically better, cheaper, faster," Lenhart said.

The technology replaces sodium methoxide - a toxic, corrosive and flammable catalyst - in biodiesel production. And that eliminates several production steps including acid neutralization, water washes and separations. All those steps dissolve the toxic catalyst so it can't be used again.

Catilin's nanospheres are solid and that makes them easier to handle, Lenhart said. They can also be recovered from the chemical mixture and recycled. And they can be used in existing biodiesel plants without major equipment changes.

Lin said the catalyst has been under development for the past four years. The company will market the third generation of the catalyst -- a version that's much cheaper to produce than earlier, more uniform versions.

The technology was developed with the support of grants from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Basic Energy Sciences and the state's Grow Iowa Values Fund. Patents for the technology are pending. Catilin has signed licensing agreements with Iowa State's research foundation that allows the company to commercialize Lin's catalyst technologies.

As the company grows and demonstrates its technology, Lin said company leaders will have to decide whether the company will become a catalyst company, will work with partners to develop biodiesel plants or will produce its own biodiesel.

Even though he expects plenty of worldwide business for the new company, Lin said he'll continue to work as an Iowa State professor. "I'm not going to quit my day job," he said. "And I'll continue to do research in the catalysis and biorenewables area."

Nanotechnology is playing an ever greater role in bioenergy technologies. Researchers from China recently used carbon nanotubes loaded with rhodium (Rh) nanoparticles as reactors to convert a gas mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen into ethanol (more here).

Other applications include the development of gas storage media that can store many times more natural gas/biogas/biohydrogen than traditional gas tanks (earlier post and here), the creation of nano-enhanced biofuels and plant based oil (an example) and improved ways of utilizing biofuel waste streams (previous post).

In combination with biotechnology, nanotech promises to deliver major efficiency increases in agriculture (an overview).


Picture: an example of selenium nanospheres formed by bacteria. Note, these are not the same nanospheres as the ones developed by professor Lin. Credit: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

References:
Iowa State University: Iowa State chemist hopes startup company can revolutionize biodiesel production - July 2, 2007.