Current Status of the Fuel Market

Fuel ethanol refers to starch (corn, cassava, etc.), sugar (sugar cane, sugar beet, sweet sorghum, etc.) and lignocellulose (wood, crop straw, etc.) as raw materials, after pretreatment (crushing, cooking), saccharification, fermentation, distillation, More than 99.5% anhydrous ethanol was obtained after dehydration. Fuel ethanol is generally obtained from biomass by biological fermentation or enzyme hydrolysis. It is a clean high octane number fuel and an excellent fuel improver.

Adding fuel ethanol to gasoline in a certain proportion has the advantages of increasing octane number of gasoline, improving exhaust emission and improving combustion performance of oil products. The results showed that CO/HC/CO2 decreased by 1.8% / 12.9% and 2.4%, respectively, compared with the exhaust gas emitted by gasoline and ethanol gasoline (E10). In addition, biomass energy is renewable energy, which is conducive to reducing dependence on fossil fuels such as oil. With the rapid development of spherical fuel ethanol, China temporarily ranks third in the world. From 2000 to 2016, the total global production of fuel ethanol increased from 17 billion litres to 98.6 billion liters, CAGR up to 11.6%. In the United States, Brazil ranks in the first two producing countries. In 2017, the fuel ethanol output was 15.818 billion gallons and 7.060 billion gallons respectively. The total output of fuel ethanol in both countries accounted for about 85%of the global output. Although China ranks the third largest fuel ethanol producer in the world, the output reached 875 million gallons in 2017(only 3%of the total global output). In terms of production and production efficiency, there is still a significant gap between the two countries. 

At present, the production in China mainly adopts the traditional fermentation process. Compared with the United States and Brazil, the domestic development of coal ethanol technology has the value of promotion because of its good economy and the natural advantages of not consuming grain. Since 2012, Yanchang Group and Dalian Institute of Chemical products have jointly developed coal ethanol technology, using dimethyl ether hydroxyylation process, in 2016,it has completed the design and construction of 100000 tons of process package, the purity of the product is more than 99%. At present, 500000 ton industrial equipment is being designed and constructed, once put into production, it will have significant economic and social benefits. Therefore, the development of ethanol industry in China is greatly affected by the policy.The original purpose of the alcohol industry was to solve the problem of aged grain. Around 2000, China's corn inventory was too much, in order to consume excess aged grain, the state issued a policy, stipulated by Jilin fuel ethanol Co., Ltd., Henan Tianguan Group. Anhui Fengyuan Biochemistry Co., Ltd. (later renamed Cofco biochemical Co., Ltd.) and Heilongjiang China Resources Ethanol Co., Ltd., four enterprises designated to produce fuel ethanol, among which Henan Tianguan Group mainly uses wheat as raw material. The other three are all based on corn. At the same time, the policy defines the business scope of the four enterprises. The policy was piloted in 2002 and the market pattern was positive in 2004 Form.

After 2006, the problem of old grain has been basically solved, and the fuel ethanol industry with grain as raw material has appeared the dispute of "competing with people for grain". Therefore, the state has gradually inclined its policy to non-grain ethanol. The production enterprises began to build 1.5 generation fuel ethanol with cassava as raw material. However, China's cassava import dependence is relatively high, resulting in unstable raw material prices and subject to human control. With the continuous progress of technology, the second generation cellulose ethanol, which uses corn cob, straw and other cellulose-rich crop wastes as raw materials, has also begun to go into production, and because of its advantages of not competing with people for grain and land with grain, it has become a new development direction of fuel ethanol.