Wisconsin company and Shell Oil agree on deal to make bio-gasoline
State NewsA Madison-based research firm and Shell Oil announced a joint effort to produce gasoline from plants.
A Madison-based research firm and Shell Oil announced a joint effort to produce gasoline from plants.
Virent Energy Systems Inc. has developed a process called BioForming which converts the sugar in some plants into hydrocarbon molecules like those produced at a refinery.
According to Virent officials, these molecules contain more energy than ethanol and are more fuel efficient.
Another benefit is that the molecules can be blended to make gasoline or combined with gasoline that contains ethanol.
"Our products match petroleum gasoline in functionality and performance, said Dr. Randy Cortright, Virent's co-founder, chief technical officer and executive vice president.
"Our results to date fully justify accelerating commercialization of this technology," he added.
Virent officials noted another benefit to creating gasoline from plants is that the fuel can use existing pipelines, storage tanks and fuel pumps.
Ethanol is corrosive and requires special containers, pipelines and engines.
"The technical properties of today's bio-fuels pose some challenges to widespread adoption," said Dr. Graeme Sweeney, Shell executive vice president for future fuels and C02.
"Fuel distribution infrastructure and vehicle engines are being modified to cope but new fuels on the horizon, such as Virent's, with characteristics similar or even superior to gasoline and diesel, are very exciting," he added.
In a previous interview with the RiverTown Newspaper Group, Eric Apfelbach, Virent president, pointed out that Virent's process produces water, whereas ethanol which requires a lot of water to produce.
"You would have to treat the water in order to drink it, but you can recycle it for industrial uses," he said.
Virent officials say that the plant sugars needed for the process can be obtained from non-food sources like corn stover, switch grass, wheat straw and sugarcane pulp, in addition to conventional bio-fuel feedstock like wheat, corn and sugarcane.
More information on the process is available on Virent's Web site at www.virent.com
Tags: wisconsin_news, biogasoline, shell_oil, virentenergysystems
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