Core Biofuel produces fuel derived from wood

Canadian company Core BioFuel has produced a wood-to-fuel process to create high-octane, benzene-free, drop-in petrol.

The fuel will be produced from dimethyl ether and Larry Melnichuk, vice president of process design and development at Core says the technology ‘performs better than expected’.

He says: ‘The catalyst for this reaction did not produce benzene - which the EPA has determined should not be present in petrol unless lower than their current criteria levels. Removing benzene is difficult and expensive and our process does not incur this cost. Utilising similar operating parameters, our reactor actually produces a gasoline superior to ExxonMobil’s well-known commercial MTG (methanol-to-gasoline) process.’

‘Our gasoline [petrol] octane rating is 94, which means it can be blended successfully with lesser grade refinery gasoline to meet retail pump 92 octane requirements. Our testing also determined that operating costs will be lower because we have less volume to recycle than in an MTG process - we produce more of what we want and less of what we don’t want.’

The company has a patent pending for the technology and says it will produce an alternative to drop-in fuel derived from cellulosic biomass.