Bioethanol (fuel grade) has an alcohol percentage over 99 %.

Hveiti’s protein product will be able to replace 8-9 % of Denmark’s yearly soybean import from South America, thereby reducing the pressure on the South American rainforests.

The advantage of biorefining is that you can separate the components of the raw material, so that the individual parts are used more profitably than in its raw form. In practice, this means that you can produce food, feed and bioethanol from the same wheat grain, which means that the agricultural land is used in a more efficient way.

There are many possibilities within the market for electric cars, but electricity cannot be used for the more heavy means of transportation such as airplanes, ships and trucks.

On a yearly basis, Hveiti uses 530.000 ton feed wheat for the production of bioethanol, food and feed. Denmark produced about 5 million ton feed wheat each year, of which 1.5-2 million ton are exported.

Bioethanol is produced from starch and sugar such as corn, maize and sugar cane, and can be mixed with regular gasoline. All Danish gasoline contains 5 % bioethanol.
Biodiesel is produced from vegetable oils or waste grease, and can be mixed with regular diesel oil. All Danish diesel oil contains 7 % biodiesel.
 

There are several different kinds of bioethanol products:

• ED95: Gasoline with a 95 % bioethanol blend and 5 % additives – used in busses and trucks with modified diesel engines.
• E85: Gasoline with an 85 % bioethanol blend – used in cars with Flexi fuel engines.
• E10: Gasoline with a 15 % bioethanol blend – used in regular cars.
• Bioethanol: for biochemical products.

The feed wheat used in Hveiti’s production is today not used for food, but biorefining opens up the door for new possibilities. By processing feed wheat, the fibers can be used for e.g. breakfast products and bread mixes.

Today all biofuel plants must have a CO2 mitigation of minimum 35 %. This is partly due to high energy consumption from the drying process, and that the energy used in the process is not based on renewable sources, and partly to a poor exploitation of the raw material.

Hveiti has a CO2 reduction capacity of 70 %, and the minimum requirement is today 35 %. From 1. January 2017 the requirement will be raised to 50 %, and from January 2018, the CO2 reduction capacity is raised to 60 % for all new plants.

With a CO2 reduction capacity of 70 %, Hveiti has no problems fulfilling the requirements put forth by the EU directive on the promotion of the use of renewable sources. The directive states that bioethanol plants must have a CO2 mitigation capacity of at least 35 %.

The wheat that we eat in Denmark is imported from Southern Europe, where the conditions for wheat cultivation are different than in Northern Europe, which means that the wheat has a lower amount of starch, which makes it suitable for baking. The high amount of starch found in Danish wheat makes it unsuitable for food. 

Internationally, there is a great demand for proteins, and especially the EU is experiencing a shortage of protein feed. With an import of 44 million tons on a yearly basis – of which the main part is soybean protein produced in South America – EU is the world’s largest importer of protein feed.