Wisconsin-based Virent Energy Systems Inc. and international petroleum giant Royal Dutch Shell PLC have announced their first year in a joint research and development effort to produce biogasoline was successful. The companies have been working to convert plant sugars directly into gasoline and gasoline blends using Virent’s Aqueous Phase Reforming (APR) process, BioForming, and are on track to produce at a commercial scale by 2010.
Virent’s president and chief executive officer Eric Apfelbach said, “we’ve exceeded the milestones that were set out in the program. There’s a lot of excitement that things are going the right way. Now we’re focused on the things we need to do to scale up and commercialize the technology.”
Virent’s process involves using a solid-state catalyst to convert a variety of process sugars into hydrocarbons. The company’s APR method is heavily patented and “we do enforce it worldwide” Apfelbach said. Base patents have been exclusively licensed to Virent from the University of Wisconsin’s Alumni Research Foundation. Other patents are owned outright by Virent.
Benefits of Virent’s BioForming process, said Apfelbach, include that it’s a low-temperature technology and is scalable to fit in an economic feedstock radius. The process allows a wide-range of feedstocks to be used and is water positive. The most important benefit, according to Apfelbach, is that the end-product will be compatible with the existing gasoline infrastructure.
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The ability to use a variety of process sugars allows Virent to acquire feedstock from multiple sources. “Cargill Inc. is one of our investors so we get some feedstocks from Cargill,” Apfelbach said. “We have a (U.S.) Department of Energy contract that involves Archer Daniels Midland Co. so we can buy some feedstocks from them. For more unique stuff, we’ll just buy it off the shelf as granulated sucrose and then we’ll dissolve it here.”
In September 2007, Virent received a $2 million NIST Advanced Technology Program grant to continue developing pretreatment technologies to generate sugars and chemical intermediates for further biofuels processing. Apfelbach said the grant was important. “One of the advantages we have is that since we’re using a catalyst and not a bug, we can process many different types of carbohydrates all at once and it does not degrade the performance of the process. The main reason cellulosic ethanol has been slowed down is that you’ve got to get the cellulose into monosaccharides that the bugs will eat. It’s tough to do. We don’t have to worry about that.”
As part of the grant research, Virent is also working on the technology to convert raw biomass into biogasoline. Apfelbach believes sugar cane will be the most cost-effective feedstock for some time, but switchgrass and miscanthus can also be used with this technology.
Apfelbach said the program’s current activity focuses on chemical engineering work to scale up the BioForming process. Most of the work is being done at Virent’s 30,000 square foot catalytic biorefinery facility in Madison, Wis. Shell plays a supporting role in the program and will supply knowledge on catalytic processing as well as verify that the product will be completely interchangeable with current gasoline infrastructures.
The partnership between Virent and Shell was launched a year ago with a five year agreement. “It’s a race, basically, to get through the various gates and meet the technical milestones,” Apfelbach said. He projects Virent will be operating a 10,000 liter capacity demonstration facility by 2010. The facility’s location hasn’t been determined. Apfelbach said it will depend on what will be the best strategic way to enter the gasoline market, as well as the location of cheap feedstock.
“We really think we’re out to a lead here and we think we can maintain that lead,” Apfelbach said. “With partners like American Honda Motor Co., Shell and Cargill, we have everything we need to expand this on a global scale. We’ve got customers that will buy 1 billion gallons of this fuel tomorrow if we can make it today. So we’ve really got to get that job done and give them a billion gallons.”