Neste - preorder the future?

[begreen]

Neste is the world's largest producer of renewable diesel. They also make a bioplastic from waste materials. Now they have started a discussion on how we can change core systems of education, entertainment, travel, etc. to be more productive and sustainable. I just started reading about this company. Do any of the green gurus here know more about this company?
https://www.neste.com/preorderthefuture/

 

[iamlucky13]

I'm not familiar with them, but Wikipedia indicates they are a mid-sized petroleum company (about 1/10th the annual revenue of BP) that also has some decent sized renewables projects.

That "preorder the future" subsite seems really nebulous, focused more on style than substance, except the last two links that are actually press releases on their biofuel and bioplastic from the main Neste website. The main site is fine, but I'd call that subsite very Web 2.0, and I don't mean that as a compliment.

Here is something interesting, however. They have their own proprietary process for making biodiesel:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NEXBTL

The unique part is they react with the glycerol chain in the vegetable oils so it is also converted to fuel. It's not clear how the overall environmental impact compares to the more common process (whether it needs more exotic catalysts or more energy to process than the FAME process), but the resulting fuel is even more like regular diesel than FAME biofuels, they get a little more fuel for a given amount of feedstock, and they avoid the waste byproduct of large amounts of glycerol - about 10% of the output from FAME.

Even with the small size of the biodiesel industry presently, the result has been a glut of glycerol, and the glycerol the biofuel industry produces is of low quality (lots of water and other contaminants that industries which currently use glycerol don't want). Effectively, glycerol is a waste-product of ordinary biodiesel production. There is research going on to find other uses for it, but Neste avoids the need to do so.

More on the glycerol issue here:
http://articles.extension.org/pages/29264/new-uses-for-crude-glycerin-from-biodiesel-production

 

[Sprinter]

That "preorder the future" subsite seems really nebulous, focused more on style than substance,

Sure, the company seems more heavy on public relations/marketing/ and especially capital-seeking than on product efficacy.

I'm going to bow out of the technical aspects (and probably the rest of it, too), as I am not a ChemE, but this whole thing just sounds a little slippery to me. Not sure why, so take as a grain of salt. Just a hunch based on a lot of years of hunches...

Nice, pretty website, though...

Sorry if I seem a little negative tonight, but it's getting late.

 

[woodgeek]

Didn't really see anything surprising at the website. The use of biomass as a replacement for a wide variety of petroleum products is not new...the factor is price. This is not a technology problem....its a money problem. The products being sold by this company all have one thing in common....companies and municipalities buying products for greenwashing.

 

[peakbagger]

I think woodgeek hit the nail on the head. There are plenty of plant based renewable replacements for fossil fuels. Its all comes down that they are quite costly to produce. Especially with the current decline in fossil prices, the only market for these fuels is for those entities that have to buy them either by outright regulation or penalties on fossil fuels. Oil companies in the US pay a hefty penalty for every barrel of non renewable fuel they handle alternatively they can subsidize renewable fuels by buying RINS. Here is link to explain the RIN concept https://www.epa.gov/renewable-fuel-...on-numbers-rins-under-renewable-fuel-standard. Its a nice concept but it has been tainted by abuses. For quite awhile the standard observation in industry was most RIN producers were either in convicted, indicted or about to be indicted. Things are somewhat better these days but the only folks making money are selling into heavily subsidized niches. The US military especially the Navy has been using biofuels and a small industry has sprung up to supply those fuels at high costs.

Vinod Khosla has bet big US government money on renewable fuels several times and 60 Minutes has hyped how great he is but conviently neglect to report when the firms go bust. He let the government take the fall and then walks away with tax credits that he can sell at a profit https://www.washingtonpost.com/busi...899d12-69d7-11e4-9fb4-a622dae742a2_story.html

The use of wood components to replace high value chemical feed stocks is also fairly old news. This is usually hyped when the fundamental process costs for making lower cost fuel replacements is so poor that the solution is to look for a higher cost chemical. The university of Maine had partnered with a questionable partner, Lynn Tilton http://www.forbes.com/sites/jennago...hest-self-made-woman-in-america/#19c6f5a2ec1a (currently under indictment by the SEC) and for several years hyped a process to extract high value renewable feedstocks from pulp mill byproducts. When the money ran out, the mill that her investment company owned closed down leaving a lot of folks out of work. University of Maine is trying to soldier on solo but few hold out hope other than an academic experiment.

If the world creates a viable carbon tax or outright bans fossil fuels then renewable fuel becomes the next best thing and the prices will raise to the point that they become viable. Realistically what has happened to date is that countries who follow Kyoto commitments just export high carbon activities to third world countries.