50 Hottest Companies in Bioenergy: Special voters’ report on Drop-in biofuels

In this year’s 50 Hottest Companies in Bioenergy voting, early results have indicated that “drop-in fuels” are making a strong showing: several companies, including Rentech and PetroAlgae, may make the list; companies such as LS9 and Gevo are looking at moving up sharply; while Amyris and UOP are amoing those potentially reaching #1 this year.

Digest readers indicated their interest early, ratring drop-in diesel and jet fuel the #1 and #2 “hot fuels” in a recent poll.

Here is some more background onsome candidate companies in this year’s rankings that are focused partially or completely on drop-in biofuels that require no change in infrastructure or engines for use. Fuels include renewable jet fuel, renewable diesel, renewable gasoline and biobutanol.

Amyris Biotechnologies

Amyris was the subject of a series of articles by Digest columnist Dr. Rosalie Lober earlier this fall. “Successful companies have choices! A successful company has options. A successful company has possibilities,” wrote Dr. Lober. “This is not only true because of their profitability and/or revenues and market share. It results from the confidence the company gains by achieving its goals. Most times, success comes because of the networking and teamwork the company has garnered on the path to success. Amyris Biotechnologies received funds from a $42.6 million grant over a five year period from the prestigious Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The company was well on its way to accomplishing its goals for producing a life-saving anti-malaria therapy. As they thought of future projects for the pipeline, they were at the proverbial crossroad.”

Aquaflow Bionomic-Solray Energy (NZ)

Aquaflow has developed technology to harvest wild algae from municipal sewage ponds, farm outflows or rivers. Aquaflow’s manufactures 40-feet containers which can be deployed in remote locations, and scaled. The company’s approach avoids upfront capital costs of other algae-based fuel technologies based on development of monocultures, ponds or bioreactors.

BP-Dupont’s Butamax

Producing ethanol today, BP Biofuels has investments throughout the entire biofuels value chain: from sustainable feedstocks, including cellulosic energy grasses, through to advantaged molecules like biobutanol. BP’s close links into other sectors that will be crucial to the development of the biofuel industry, particularly the automotive industry, and its in-depth knowledge of the fuels market and infrastructure, will underpin the biofuels industry’s intentions to grow to be a more material and sustainable part of the global transport fuel market. In partnership with DuPont, BP is developing the advanced biofuel biobutanol and constructing a technology demonstration facility in the UK.

Cobalt Biofuels

Producer of Butanol, electricity and a small amount of acetone via integrated biorefinery and biomass electricity generation. Biofuels production involves fermentation of non-food cellulosic (hemicellulose and cellulose) feedstock. Lignin is passed to the onsite boiler and generates sufficient power to serve the needs of the biorefinery, with significant excess power exported to the grid.

Dynamic Fuels

Dynamic Fuels is a 50/50 venture between Syntroleum and Tyson Foods. Dynamic Fuels’ business model is “own and operate” bio-refineries based on Syntroleum’s Bio-Synfining process. The latter is a process for converting low value and waste fatty acid/glyceride streams (from spent vegetable oils used in food processing to palm oil fatty acid distillate) into high quality hydrocarbon fuels (diesel, jet fuel, naphtha, and LPG).

Gevo

Fermentation of all sugars including mixed sugars from cellulosics to biobutanol. Gevo will produce biobutanol that can be blended directly into gasoline (at any ratio without the need to modify standard engines) and be used to make renewable hydrocarbons (“green gasoline”), diesel, and jet fuel, chemical intermediates and biobased plastics.

LS9

Production of UltraClean Diesel, other UltraClean Fuels, and high-value chemicals. LS9 has a microbial, fermentation-based process that enables the cost effective conversion of renewable plant biomass into advanced biofuels that are drop-in compatible with the existing infrastructure. The same technology platform enables the production of a diversity of high-value chemicals.

PetroAlgae

PetroAlgae is making fuel and proteins out of lemna (duckweed) in Fellsmere, and is nearing completion of a vertically integrated, scaleable, licensable 5-6,000 gallon per acre microcrop production system. A first master licensee has been announced for China, Taiwan and part of Japan, and an MOU was recently signed to develop fuels for Indian Oil, India’s largest company.

Remfuel (India)

Developing biofuel technologies, which eliminate transesterification for straight vegetable oil (SVO), animal fat oil and algal oil. REMB-1 is based on a new biodiesel source, which generates multi-fold income to the farmer compared to traditional biodiesel sources like Jatropha and requires no transesterification. The cultivation of this tree also generates an exotic food for human consumption. Novelty of this technology invention is established by acceptance of all 38 claims by PCT as novel and patentable (PCT filed) REMB-2)is a fuel additive, which makes SVO to work as a ‘drop-in’ bio-fuel to blend into diesel. This essentially eliminates the transesterification of fats, and allows any SVO, animal fat oil and algal oil to be used directly as a diesel blend.

RenTech

The Company’s Rentech-SilvaGas biomass gasification process is the technology used in the only biomass gasifier operated at commercial scale in the United States. It can convert multiple biomass feedstocks into synthesis gas (syngas) for renewable power production, and can be integrated for conversion of syngas into complex hydrocarbons by the patented Rentech Process based on Fischer-Tropsch chemistry. The final products after upgrading are ultra-clean synthetic jet and diesel fuels, specialty waxes and chemicals

UOP - partnered with Sapphire Energy, Sustainable Oils, and Terasol Energy among others

Honeywell’s UOP has developed a renewable jet fuel processing technology, as well as a joint venture. UOP and Ensyn announced the formation of a new joint venture, dubbed Envergent Technologies, that will market technologies and equipment for generating power, transportation fuel and heating oil from biomass using pyrolysis. The joint venture will utilize forest and agriculture residues as feedstocks in a Rapid Thermal process, where feedstocks are heated in the absence of oxygen, to produce pyrolysis oils that can be utilized directly in heating oil or power gen. UOP also owns a Renewable Energy & Chemicals business that produced green diesel using its Ecofining process. UOP and Vaperma announced a partnership to bring Vaperma’s polymer membrane technology to the ethanol industry, where it will reduce energy consumption and emissions for for first-generation ethanol, as well as cellulosic ethanol and butanol.

Virent

Virent’s patented catalytic BioForming process combines proprietary aqueous phase reforming (APR) technology with established petroleum refining techniques to generate the same range of hydrocarbon molecules now refined from petroleum.

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50 Hottest Companies in Bioenergy: Special voters’ report on Drop-in biofuels

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