A nine-company Japanese joint venture announced plans to build a new plant in Niigata to produce dimethyl ether (DME) for use as a synthetic next-gen fuel. The new plant begins operation in June 2008, with an intial capacity of 80,000 tons per year.
DME can be used to fuel both diesel and gasoline engines (in a 30/70 DME/LPG mix) and works particularly well in diesel engines. Synthesized through chemical conversion from natural gas or coal, it generates no carbon or particulate emissions. The Japanese and Chinese governments are both backing development of technologies for DME production and application, and the EU is looking at DME as part of its long term (beyond 2020) biofuel roadmap [PDF].
The Niigata plant will use the conventional two-step DME production process — converting syngas to methanol, then dehydrating the methanol to produce DME. Total and other Japanese companies have been working since 2001 on a process that synthesizes DME directly from syngas for commercial production.
[Source: Green Car Congress, IGU]
