On the Prospects of Butanol from Syngas

Here's a nice post on butanol and specifically on the prospects of making butanol using the gasification-syngas-catalytic synthesis route.

To put it rather simply, the author doesn't think it is worth trying to make butanol using the gasification route. Why?

"The challenge is that syngas (produced from gasification) doesn't like to form butanol. You can form a little bit directly, but CO (carbon monoxide) likes to do lots of things besides form a C4 alcohol like butanol.

Methanol is not a problem. You can also produce ethanol, which is what Range Fuels is planning on doing (although you almost always have methanol to deal with as well). But the selectivity falls off sharply as you go to higher alcohols. By the time you get to butanol, you are lucky if 5% of the product is butanol. More typical is 1-2%." (an NREL post is also provided as reference by author)

Let's get this straight. The author isn't saying butanol is a bad biofuel, in fact he professes a love for it. He is highly skeptical about the viability of butanol using the gasification and syngas route, that's all!