Agriculture will give us energy security

Dimethyl ether is not yet a widely known molecule, except perhaps in the aerosol industry. Why do we need it for power generation, why not stay with the well-known propane or renewable propane as a fuel?

When it comes to energy, diversification is important first and foremost. We don't want all our energy carriers to come from one raw material, one supplier, one production facility. DME is an energy carrier that has a low carbon footprint, can be produced from different feedstocks and uses a different production path, but allows us to use the existing LPG infrastructure.

Renewable propane is a great energy source, blended today with fossil propane. It is most often a byproduct of renewable diesel (HVO) production, with less than 10% of production by weight in this process being biopropane. As a result, to increase the volume of biopropane produced, the production of liquid fuels must be increased at the same time.

DME is produced from a variety of raw materials, including those other than those used to make renewable propane. We can produce it from such raw materials as manure, agricultural or forestry waste, including residues from the wood and paper industry. Importantly, it can account for up to 100% of production - the production plant is optimized for the production of dimethyl ether, not diesel fuel.

DME is thus complementary to renewable propane. We need different molecules to build a low-carbon, disruption-resistant supply chain in the future.

So it's all about diversifying risk.... You often say that you are changing the world one molecule at a time. What is so attractive about DME? What are the most important features of this fuel?

Yes... I'm a chemist, I love all molecules! If I look back over the last 13-14 years, I can confidently say that my focus at Oberon has been on commercializing innovative solutions. We help manufacturing companies, but also countries to reduce emissions, reduce the waste problem and give them new business options. The main tool we use is to convert waste into dimethyl ether, although sometimes the final product is renewable methanol.

As for the attractiveness of DME itself, in my opinion, the most important of its features is its ability to utilize existing LPG infrastructure while drastically reducing carbon emissions.

That's right. During his recent presentation in Warsaw you presented amazing_CO2 reduction rates, some to negative levels. How is this even possible? Does it all depend on the raw material used in the production process?

You are absolutely right, it all depends on the raw material. Dimethyl ether can be produced from manure, sludge fraction from sewage treatment plants, agricultural waste, forest residues and others. As for the emission reduction rate, it all depends on how the waste is processed. Let's take the US dairy industry as an example. Many of these dairy farms use a flushing system to collect manure. Cattle manure is regularly flushed into the tank, but this process leads to the release of significant amounts of methane into the atmosphere. The use of covered tanks and a digester allows us to sequester the methane and use it in our process. We have thus eliminated greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere.

This is very interesting, because it means that first we reduce emissions of methane, which is a very potent greenhouse gas, and then, as I understand it, we can produce biogas. In the next step, we produce DME from biogas, correct?

Yes, it's interesting also in the sense that a modular installation is possible, because you can use it as a distributed system. That's important for energy security - take the example of the war across Poland's eastern border. You can create many small-scale biogas plants, which will then convert it into DME. In cases where such a farm is close to a gas pipeline, it may make more economic sense to purify the biogas and feed it into the gas grid. If it is a smaller farm it may make more sense to generate biogas and generate electricity. But there are also cases, especially in larger plants that are far from the transmission infrastructure, when it makes economic sense to produce a molecule that is easy to store and transport. And this is where DME comes into play.

You said it's an alternative or complementary molecule to existing options, such as propane or biopropane. Can we mix them safely?

Yes, we can mix them safely. DME is an excellent solvent and has therefore been used extensively in the aerosol industry for decades. What is the significance of this for LPG infrastructure? If only that if you are dealing with 100% DME content, and in practice if you have more than 20% DME in the mixture, you have to use special reinforced seals. You must use Teflon or a similar material as a replacement for rubber gaskets. High-concentration dimethyl ether will simply dissolve the rubber. In that case, modifications to the infrastructure come into play, right? With a lower DME content in the mix, no modifications are necessary.

Well, that's right - you also mentioned mixtures below 20% DME. What about them? Do they require replacement of gaskets?

U.S. Suburban Propane buys renewable dimethyl ether produced in Southern California from us and mixes it with fossil propane as a 4% blend. This one is sold to 450 customers for use in forklifts and on-road vehicles as autogas. The World Liquid Gas Association is currently collecting data on DME-propane blends and their compatibility with infrastructure, and analyzing any technical problems that may arise. The WLGA has also conducted additional tests to examine any risks associated with the deployment of DME-propane blends on a global scale. In 2023, a recommendation was developed that a blend of up to 12% can be safely used in all current propane applications without any modifications. The range from 12% to 20%, on the other hand, is taken as the upper limit of material compatibility.

So below 12% as recommended by the World Liquid Gas Association, the mixtures are perfectly safe even without reinforced seals?

That's right.

Poland is a member of the European Union with a strong agricultural sector, food processing and timber industry, with air quality issues. We import 85% of LPG and use it mainly in road transportation. How can Poland use DME and how can we introduce it into our energy mix?

This is an opportunity for Poland, as Poland is rich in resources on the basis of which the production of renewable DME can be developed. This would result in strengthening energy security. Thinking about the raw materials you mentioned, the developed agricultural industry, the poultry industry, the food processing industry, the timber industry, they can all be used to produce renewable DME. This is a major asset. You can use waste streams, which is not easy at the stage of proper targeting, but it will create additional development opportunities for the industries producing these streams. The abundance of raw materials in Poland creates a great opportunity to produce your own renewable DME, reducing dependence on LPG imports. You would, as it were, reduce greenhouse gas emissions by generating energy carriers with low_CO2 emissions. It is conceivable that with this resource wealth, Poland would become an exporter of DME.

However, innovation, as we have seen over the past 14 years at Oberon Fuels, requires government support in addition to private investment. It would be optimal to use the resources used to support fossil fuels to stimulate renewable fuel production. What are the market opportunities? Global supply chain for 3 billion customers worldwide. Human capital in the LPG industry we estimate globally 4 million people who know how to handle gas safely. Poland has the needed resources, both natural and human, to produce renewable DME and help ensure energy independence and improve air quality.

In the previous year POGP conducted a public opinion survey, which showed that some 54% of respondents had used LPG in the past three years, for cooking, heating, but primarily as autogas.

In the U.S., LPG is not as widely used in transportation. However, thanks to support from the federal government, renewable DME is already approved for use in the transportation sector. It is worth noting, however, that other sectors are not as supported by the US government.

Can you comment further on the modularity of DME production technology? My impression is that a distributed manufacturing infrastructure offers some advantages in terms of energy security.

We build our production modules on skids, and then they are transported from the fabrication site to the production site once we have obtained the required permits and the preparatory work is complete. This gives us optimized investment time. When the module arrives on site, we still have to install and connect it, but it is not built from scratch. Of course, they are not designed to be moved from site to site on a regular basis, but the skid-mounted module format ensures that the production installation can be moved if necessary. Even storage tanks can be built on skids. When our customer decides to move or close a plant, our production assets can be moved to the new location. There, the preparatory work and permits have to be done again, but the module itself can be put back into operation.

Of course, the unit cost of a small modular plant per unit of production is higher than that of a large plant benefiting from economies of scale. However, the way to reduce costs is to build many installations at once. A module factory does not produce one installation - it builds 5-10 at a time, for different locations.

It's like the Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) in nuclear power.

That's right.

Thank you very much for the fascinating conversation and welcome to the European LPG Congress in Katowice in 2025.‍