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Updated: Sep 20, 2025

Laboratory Production of Biofuels and Biochemicals from a Rapeseed Oil through Catalytic Cracking Conversion
Published on: September 2, 2016
Pathway to a land-neutral expansion of Brazilian renewable fuel production
Luis Ramirez Camargo1,2,3, Gabriel Castro4,5, Katharina Gruber4
1Institute for Sustainable Economic Development, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna, Austria. l.e.ramirezcamargo@uu.nl.
Abstract:
Biofuels are currently the only available bulk renewable fuel. They have, however, limited expansion potential due to high land requirements and associated risks for biodiversity, food security, and land conflicts. We therefore propose to increase output from ethanol refineries in a land-neutral methanol pathway: surplus CO2-streams from fermentation are combined with H2 from renewably powered electrolysis to synthesize methanol. We illustrate this pathway with the Brazilian sugarcane ethanol industry using a spatio-temporal model. The fuel output of existing ethanol generation facilities can be increased by 43%-49% or ~100 TWh without using additional land. This amount is sufficient to cover projected growth in Brazilian biofuel demand in 2030. We identify a trade-off between renewable energy generation technologies: wind power requires the least amount of land whereas a mix of wind and solar costs the least. In the cheapest scenario, green methanol is competitive to fossil methanol at an average carbon price of 95€ tCO2-1.
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