GLOBAL CLIMATE DEBATE

Virent, Shell Say Catalytic Process Turns Plant Sugars to Gasoline

Virent Energy and Shell say they've developed a catalytic process that can produce gasoline from plant sugars -- gasoline that is chemically identical to gasoline made from crude oil.

That would give this "biogasoline" a big leg up over the better known biofuel, ethanol, which can also be produced from sugars.  Ethanol produces poorer vehicle mileage because it has lower heat content than traditional petroleum fuels.

Virent and Shell believe the process can be scaled up to a commercial refinery that would produce premium gasoline at a cost competitive with conventional gasoline, even without the federal advanced fuel subsidy for which the new fuel qualifies.  They are hoping to decide whether, when and where to build a 100 million gallon per year refinery in the coming year.

If the technology proves out, it would be the world's first viable biogasoline process, and could be adapted to produce jet fuel as well.

In a telephone press conference Tuesday, Virent Energy CEO Lee Edwards said a demonstration plant operating since last November to test his company's patented catalytic process had exceeded expectations.  He said the process had proven "agnostic" about what kind of plant the feedstock sugars came from, operating equally well with corn, beet and cane sugars.

Process developer Randy Cortright said a range of feedstocks had been tested, including sugars from some biomass, bagasse, and cellulosic feedstocks.  But extracting the sugars from those materials is currently expensive.  Cortright said Virent is working on better "biomass deconstruction" technology, both in-house and with DOE's National Renewable Energy Laboratory.  Edwards said he was uncertain when technology would develop to make those feedstocks commercially competitive.

He and Cortright said the catalytic conversion process they've developed is highly energy efficient and actually easier on catalytic converters than current gasolines, producing less than half the greenhouse tailpipe emissions of conventional gasolines.  Lifecycle emissions can be kept low by working with farmers to ensure sustainable crop methods, they said.

Edwards said they hope their process can be backfit at existing facilities such as corn mills and biorefineries to take advantage of existing feedstock supply and gasoline distribution networks.