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Biofuels

Avantium develops a new generation biofuels for the transportation fuel market. Biofuels are very much in the media these days, because they are an alternative to oil-based fuels.

There are great concerns worldwide about the environmental effects of using oil-based fuels such as gasoline and diesel, in particular greenhouse effects that lead to global warming.

Biofuels are transportation fuels that are based on biomass (biomass is the collective name for all plant material, including wheat, grass and wood). Biomass is generated all over the world (plants, trees and grass grow more or less anywhere) by a process called photosynthesis with sunlight as the energy source. Because biofuels don't bring new greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, they are renewable and environmentally much more benign than oil-based fuels.

If you fill your car with gasoline or with diesel today, there is a chance that you use a small percentage of biofuel. Currently there are two biofuels on the market: bioethanol and biodiesel; they are mixed (blended) with oil-based fuels before they are sold at the gas stations, but they make up only 1% of the global fuel market. Governments in Europe and the United States would like this percentage to increase to 20-30%. With the existing biofuels it is unlikely that we will achieve this. Bioethanol and biodiesel are more expensive to produce than gasoline and diesel, so they rely on government subsidies and grants. There are a number of other disadvantages that limit their use. With bioethanol you can drive 35% fewer kilometers per liter compared to gasoline; it also has corrosive properties, and can easily damage expensive storage tanks and pipelines. Biodiesel can only be produced from a limited number of plants and solidifies when it gets cold (below 5 degrees Centigrade). Not very practical for many parts of the world, because a car engine won't work on a fuel that's solid!

Avantium is developing a new generation of biofuels. Our biofuels are produced from sugars (just like bioethanol) by a chemical production process using a catalyst (this is different from bioethanol that's produced by a fermentation process). They can be mixed with oil-based fuels and can be used without modifications to the engine. It is our ambition to develop a production process that is so effective that our biofuels can compete with oil-based fuels. Of course our biofuels have the advantage of being renewable, and don't release new greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.