Biofuel producers in Asia are using instrumentation to tackle complexity

Apr 19 2025

With sophisticated and varied agricultural sectors, Asia’s biofuel industry is emerging as one of the world’s most complex.

By Jed Thomas

From palm-based biodiesel in Southeast Asia to cellulosic ethanol in India and waste-to-fuel innovation in China and Australia, Asia is shaping a biofuel future as diverse as its geography.

Yet across all these sectors, one common thread ties them together: the growing role of instrumentation, monitoring, and smart control systems.

As the region scales up its biofuel production to meet national mandates, reduce imports, and curb emissions, producers are leaning on sensors and automation to handle complex feedstocks, improve safety, and prove sustainability.

For engineers and instrumentation users in oil, gas, and petrochemicals, this landscape offers a fascinating window into how advanced measurement technology is being applied in rapidly evolving, regionally distinct contexts.

Diverse feedstocks and difficult monitoring

In Asia, biofuels are often produced from challenging feedstocks: palm fatty acid distillate in Indonesia, used cooking oil in China, rice straw in India, and algae in Japan. This variability creates a strong case for real-time monitoring.

Take Indonesia and Malaysia, where biodiesel plants routinely process high free fatty acid (FFA) oils. Here, inline FTIR and titration analysers monitor FFA levels to optimise esterification conditions.

Pre-treatment units are equipped with pH, temperature, and flow sensors to ensure the acidic oils are neutralized before entering the transesterification stage, critical to avoiding soap formation or catalyst deactivation.

In India’s emerging second-generation ethanol plants, which process crop residues like rice straw, sensor networks track feed moisture, reactor temperatures, enzyme dosing, and fermentation parameters.

These measurements are crucial to maintain yield despite the variability of the biomass and its high silica and ash content.

Similarly, China’s advanced ethanol facilities, some converting steel mill off-gases into ethanol via microbial fermentation, use gas composition analysers, pressure sensors, and bioreactor monitoring instruments to maintain ideal conditions for gas fermentation.

These systems resemble those used in complex chemical synthesis and must be both precise and rugged.

Monitoring for hazardous conditions

Asian producers are increasingly focused on plant safety, especially as facilities scale up to meet national biofuel targets.

In biodiesel plants, where methanol storage and flammable vapours present major risks, operators have adopted explosion-proof level sensors, gas detectors, and SIS systems to manage overfill, leaks, and static buildup.

Hydrogen management is now a growing concern as more refineries consider co-processing bio-oils or producing SAF.

Biogas facilities, common in Thailand, Vietnam, and India, also bring safety challenges. Anaerobic digesters must be closely monitored for methane, CO₂, and hydrogen sulphide.

Gas analysers and corrosion-resistant probes help maintain safe gas quality and protect downstream purification equipment.

Overpressure sensors and flame arrestors are standard in modern setups, and more facilities are integrating remote SCADA systems to monitor units in remote rural areas.

In India’s ethanol distilleries, CO₂ monitors, ventilation systems, and explosion-proof controls are being installed in fermentation halls to reduce asphyxiation and ignition hazards.

Instrumentation is helping standardize safety practices across facilities of widely varying scale and technical maturity.

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Modular tech and scalable monitoring

Unlike some Western facilities designed as megaprojects, many Asian biofuel plants are modular or distributed.

From village-level biogas units to regional biodiesel plants, instrumentation must be affordable, reliable, and adaptable.

In response, companies are adopting wireless sensors, PLC-based controls, and low-maintenance analysers to bring high-quality monitoring to smaller sites.

In India, government-supported programs are equipping RUCO biodiesel facilities (which process used cooking oil) with flow meters and basic automation to standardize operations.

Thailand and the Philippines are piloting compact biogas units with battery-powered methane sensors and remote alarms to ensure safety without full-time operators.

These modular systems offer a scalable path forward, especially in regions where grid access, skilled labour, or capital is limited.

Vendors are also providing rugged, cost-effective sensor packages tuned to local environmental conditions (e.g., high humidity, tropical dust).

Verifying green claims

Sustainability is a growing concern across Asia, both domestically and as a condition for exporting biofuels to Europe and other regulated markets.

China, for example, is one of the world’s largest exporters of used cooking oil-based biodiesel, much of which qualifies for EU carbon credits.

To access these markets, producers must certify feedstock origin, processing energy use, and final emissions, a task that relies on instrumentation at every step.

Flow meters, tank level sensors, and energy monitors feed into ERP and traceability systems, helping companies pass sustainability audits.

In India, second-generation ethanol plants are promoted partly as a solution to stubble burning, which causes severe air pollution.

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Instrumentation plays a role here too: sensors track biomass input volumes, energy consumption, and digestate handling, enabling carbon intensity (CI) scores that demonstrate real environmental benefits.

Some facilities integrate satellite data and logistics tracking with plant-level instrumentation to prove the origin and efficiency of the process.

Even in Indonesia, where palm-based biodiesel has faced criticism over deforestation, instrumentation is helping producers shift the narrative.

More plants now track methane capture from palm oil mill effluent (POME) using gas flow meters and analysers, turning a potent greenhouse gas into renewable energy.

This not only reduces emissions but also improves process efficiency.

Challenges of next-gen biofuels

Asia is also pushing into next-generation fuels.

Japan is investing in algae-based SAF and CO₂-to-fuel technologies, while Australia is piloting power-to-liquid e-fuels using green hydrogen and biogenic CO₂.

These cutting-edge processes introduce new instrumentation needs, such as:

CO₂ purity sensors and flow meters for carbon capture and utilization.

Photon flux and nutrient sensors in algae ponds.

Hydrogen analysers and high-precision mass flow controllers in e-fuel synthesis reactors.

These systems often mirror those in petrochemical plants and highlight a convergence of technologies as biofuels become more advanced, and more demanding to monitor.

Asia’s biofuel sector is scaling up fast but with immense regional diversity.

Instrumentation is helping producers bridge that diversity, delivering consistency in a context of feedstock variability, safety complexity, and rising sustainability expectations.

From handheld gas detectors on a village biodiesel unit to mass spectrometers in a synthetic fuel demo plant, sensors are powering Asia’s progress toward greener fuels.

And for professionals in the broader energy instrumentation world, the region offers a front-row seat to how resource-constrained, innovation-driven operations can use measurement technologies to leapfrog legacy models.