Enerkem and NREL make high octane biofuel breakthrough

March 21, 2018 |

In Canada, Enerkem Inc. announced it had succeeded in producing a new high-performance biofuel that could improve the octane rating of fuels sold on the market and reduce their carbon footprint.

The chemical engineering expertise at Enerkem’s Innovation Centre in Westbury, Quebec, allowed the company to successfully develop a process that uses its proprietary waste-to-biofuel technology to produce a new biofuel with a Research Octane Number (RON) of up to 112. This is 20 points higher than the average octane rating found in regular motor gasoline. By using bio-dimethyl ether (Bio-DME), a product derived from Enerkem’s biomethanol, combined with a DME-to-high-octane-gasoline catalyst developed by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in the United States, the Enerkem-NREL team were the first to demonstrate at pilot scale the production of an alternative fuel rich in paraffins.

Category: Research

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