Fu kai mei Xue Jing China petroleum & petrochemical research institute
At present, global petroleum and petrochemical companies are accelerating the pace of low-carbon transformation, and biochemistry has become one of the key areas of common concern for all companies. ExxonMobil, as the world’s leading integrated upstream and downstream oil company, has advantages in resources, technology, market and other aspects. Many years ago, ExxonMobil took biochemistry as a part of its business layout and achieved certain results.
Development course of biochemical business
According to different business positioning and development priorities, the development of ExxonMobil’s biochemical business can be roughly divided into two stages.
The first stage (2009— 2016): Forward-looking layout. Exxonmobil believes that microalgae is a more potential raw material for producing biofuels in the future compared with corn and straw, so it takes the third generation biofuel based on microalgae as the entry point for the company to enter the biochemical field, and invests a lot of money in key layout. In 2009, ExxonMobil invested $600 million to develop microalgae biofuels in cooperation with the biotechnology company Synthetic Genomics. In 2015, we invested USD 1 million to cooperate with Michigan State University to improve the production efficiency of algae oil and microalgae products. In addition, we also cooperated with Colorado University of Mining and Technology to conduct basic research on algae photosynthesis and carbon sequestration.
The second stage (2016-present): strategic adjustment. After more than 10 years of exploration in the field of microalgae biofuels, ExxonMobil believes that this technology is still far from industrialization (it will only be competitive when the price of crude oil reaches 500 US dollars/barrel), and then its layout will focus on the second generation biofuels with agricultural and forestry wastes and waste oils as raw materials. The company has stopped investing in the microalgae project of Colorado University of Mining and Technology and the biotechnology company Viridos (formerly known as Synthetic Genomics). At the same time, cooperate with REG, a renewable energy group, to study the production of biodiesel from agricultural wastes; Cooperate with Colijn Company to expand raw materials to different kinds of cellulose; Acquisition of a 49.9% stake in Biojet, a Norwegian biofuel company, to enhance the supply capacity of biofuels.
Strategic analysis of biochemical business development
Since 2009, although the development of global liquid biofuels once fell into a trough, ExxonMobil has kept its biofuel business in several business restructurings, and explored the technology of making biofuels and biochemicals from different biomass raw materials. Its development strategy has the following three characteristics.
First, relying on its own development orientation and advanced layout, biofuel technology is taken as the breakthrough point of biochemical business layout. Because the fuel business is the absolute advantage of ExxonMobil, it chose to start from this field when laying out its biochemical business, and turned its eyes to microalgae with more potential in the future to become a leader in this field. Recently, although the focus of ExxonMobil’s layout has shifted, it is still based on the fuel field, and its target is mainly the second-generation biodiesel and sustainable aviation fuel with supply gap in the current market. In terms of technical route, it has developed the second generation biodiesel production process based on cellulose biological enzyme conversion, which has been successfully applied to automobiles and heavy trucks; The pretreatment of forest waste based on traditional chemical transformation — Gasification — Fischer-Tropsch synthesis process can produce the second generation biodiesel and sustainable aviation fuel. In addition to cooperative development, ExxonMobil also increased the supply of low-carbon fuel through mergers and acquisitions of mature enterprises and procurement.
Second, based on the breakthrough in biofuel production, it gradually expanded to the research and exploration of raw materials and products. On the one hand, ExxonMobil continues to expand the range of raw materials and explore the feasibility of vegetable oil, waste cooking oil, alcohol and carbon dioxide as sustainable raw materials. For example, converting biomass and waste into renewable methanol to produce sustainable aviation fuel; Convert the captured carbon dioxide into sustainable aviation fuel. On the other hand, we will expand product varieties and develop bio-based lubricant base oil and other products besides biodiesel and sustainable aviation fuel. For example, we cooperated with the University of Wisconsin to carry out a joint research project on biomass upgrading technology to increase the added value of bio-based products through further reaction.
The third is to take rapid breakthrough as the development goal and adopt different R&D models based on its own R&D foundation. ExxonMobil’s bio-fuel technology route is mainly divided into two categories: one is bio-refining technology route based on traditional refining, and the other is industrial biotechnology route based on fermentation and enzyme catalysis. For the former, ExxonMobil has accumulated profound research, focusing on independent research and development. Aiming at the utilization of biomass raw materials such as vegetable oil and restaurant waste oil, it developed proprietary technology EMRD^TM and dewaxing catalyst BIDW^TM. By hydrodeoxygenation and isomerization of triglycerides, the second generation biodiesel (or sustainable aviation fuel) was obtained, and the product had good low-temperature fluidity. For industrial biotechnology, ExxonMobil mainly develops through cooperation with mature companies and universities. For example, we cooperated with REG and Colijn Company to produce biodiesel from renewable cellulose sugar from fermented agricultural wastes, so as to improve the conversion rate and biodiesel yield.
Suggestions to China’s petroleum and petrochemical companies
In May, 2022, the National Development and Reform Commission issued the "Tenth Five-Year Plan for Bio-economic Development", which put forward the objectives of bio-economic development and defined four key development areas, including the substitute application of biomass, and pressed the acceleration button for the development of biochemical industry. By analyzing the development experience of ExxonMobil, the following three suggestions are put forward for the development of biochemical business of China’s petrochemical companies.
First, seize the opportunity of the times, coordinate the overall layout of the company’s business, and do a good job in top-level design. China’s petroleum and petrochemical companies should seize the opportunity period of bio-economy, base on the company’s goal of low-carbon development and energy transformation, and combine their own development characteristics and foundations to select and focus on appropriate biochemical business segments, such as biofuels or bio-based chemicals. Coordinate and optimize the overall layout of biochemical business and its existing business, do a good job in top-level design and formulate practical implementation paths, give full play to the advantages of biochemical technology such as negative carbon attributes, high reaction efficiency and reduced dependence on crude oil, and help the company to transform into a green and low-carbon company.
Second, in the early stage of new business development, expand open cooperation and technology introduction to seize market opportunities. For China’s petrochemical enterprises, compared with the traditional refining and chemical business, the biochemical business is relatively new. When entering a new field, we can refer to ExxonMobil’s development strategy, speed up technological breakthrough by cooperating with leading enterprises in the industry or introducing technology, realize the large-scale application of key biochemical technologies as soon as possible, and seize market opportunities. For example, relying on the company’s existing technology and equipment, biomass oil products with relatively stable quantity and properties can be obtained through cooperation with biomass oil producers to replace part of crude oil and produce biofuels and bio-based chemicals with mixed feed.
Third, when the business development enters a mature stage, strengthen the forward-looking technology reserve and create a competitive advantage. At present, global scientific and technological innovation has entered an unprecedented intensive active period, and new technologies such as synthetic biology and gene editing are reconstructing the competitive pattern of various industries. With the biochemical business of China’s petrochemical companies on the right track, it is suggested that they closely follow the development trend of scientific and technological innovation in the field, rely on the company’s existing technological innovation system, focus on the bottleneck and demand of industrial development, start with basic research, develop forward-looking technology and subversive technology reserves, and strengthen the protection of intellectual property rights of related technologies to create new competitive advantages in the biochemical field.
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