Japanese refiner builds ETBE facility

Japan’s Nippon Oil has built the nation's first facility for making ethanol-based petrol additive ethyl tertiary butyl ether (ETBE).

The petroleum industry plans to market ETBE-blend petrol, which burns more cleanly than regular petrol, nationwide from 2010 and have biofuel blends accounting for up to 20% of the country's annual petrol demand of roughly 1 million barrels per day.

The industry aims to blend 840,000 kilolitres a year of ETBE, containing 360,000 kl of bioethanol.

Japanese oil companies started selling ETBE-blended petrol at some petrol stations in the Tokyo area in 2007.

The unit at Nippon Oil's Negishi refinery in Yokohama, which is capable of producing 100,000 kilolitres of ETBE a year, will begin commercial operations from the end of November after trial runs.

The facility will process mostly domestically produced bioethanol bought from Hokkaido in northern Japan.