A Tall Order
Jan 05, 2010
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The frenzy over biofuels has often ended with unhappy results. Corn-based ethanol in the US served to only increase food prices and cause even more pollution in the Gulf of Mexico. The quest for palm-oil based fuels has deforested way too much of Indonesia's forest. The future does not look pretty if more folks around the world plan on buying automobiles. As with many environmental solutions, you create a new problem by solving another. So leave it to the Swedes to find what could be a more sustainable solution. SunPine, based in Piteå, northeast Sweden, has an ambitious plan underway to produce biodiesel from tall oil. Its US$30 million plant will have the capacity to produce 100,000 cubic meters of biodiesel, which when mixed with conventional diesel fuel, could potentially satisfy 10% of Sweden's diesel consumption.
Tall oil, also known as liquid rosin or tallol, is an amber-colored liquid that emerges from black liquor, a byproduct of paper and pulp processing. As black liquor leeches out of paper mills, part of this polluting mass turns into calcium soap, from which tall oil is extracted. Sweden, smothered in pine, birch, and spruce trees, has a renewable supply of tall oil, and the country has a long track record of success in developing alternative fuels from biomass.
The project has some risks: tall oil is only 2% of the total intake of the Swedish pulp and paper industry. Industry analysts estimate that there is a maximum potential of only 350,000 cubic meters of tall oil in all of Sweden. If SunPine finds success, it may have to look for other sources, and there are other industrial applications for tall oil that could compete with SunPine's product.
Issues aside, I am impressed with SunPine's "go the whole hog" approach. The tall oil project is a counter-intuitive collaboration between Preem, Sweden's largest oil company, a forest management company, and a pulp and paper processor. I doubt the company's long term goals to export this biodiesel to far-off countries will be sustainable, but for a localized approach, SunPine's efforts are laudable, as its using a feedstock that otherwise pollute.
Please enlighten us if you are aware of other biofuel sources that are flying under the radar!
