Jet fuel from cellulosic sugars pass tests

Successful conversion of cellulosic pine tree sugars to drop-in hydrocarbon fuels within the BIRD Energy project

Virent and Virdia, formerly HCL CleanTech, announce the successful conversion of cellulosic pine tree sugars to drop-in hydrocarbon fuels within the BIRD Energy project, a joint program funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, the Israeli Ministry of National Infrastructure and the BIRD Foundation. The project, which commenced in January 2011, successfully demonstrated that Virdia’s deconstruction process generated high-quality sugars from cellulosic biomass, which were converted to fuel via Virent’s BioForming process.

Virent used Virdia’s biomass-derived sugars to produce gasoline and jet fuel, the latter being sent to the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) for analysis where it passed rigorous testing. Tim Edwards of the Fuels Branch of the AFRL said, “This fuel passed the most stringent specification tests we could throw at it (such as thermal stability) under some conditions where conventional jet fuels would fail. This fuel is definitely worth further evaluation.”

… Full Text: http://www.canadianbiomassmagazine.ca/content/view/3238/57/

Tags: BIRD Energy project, cellulosic pine tree sugar, biomass

Source

Canadian Biomass, 2012-03-27.

Supplier

Binational Industrial Research and Development (BIRD) Foundation
HCL CleanTech Ltd
Israelische Ministerium für nationale Infrastruktur
US Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL)
US Department of Energy (DoE)
Virdia
Virent, Inc.

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