Biogasoline - Production

Production

Biogasoline is created by turning sugar directly into gasoline. In late March 2010, the world’s first biogasoline demonstration plant was started in Madison, WI by Virent Energy Systems, Inc. Virent discovered and developed a technique called Aqueous Phase Reforming (APR) in 2001. APR includes many processes including reforming to generate hydrogen, dehydrogenation of alcohols/hydrogenation of carbonyls, deoxygenation reactions, hydrogenolysis and cyclization. The input for APR is a carbohydrate solution created from plant material, and the product is a mixture of chemicals and oxygenated hydrocarbons. From there, the materials go through further conventional chemical processing to yield the final result: a mixture of non-oxygenated hydrocarbons that is cost-effective. These hydrocarbons are the exact hydrocarbons found in petroleum fuels which is why today’s cars do not need to be altered to run on biogasoline. The only difference is in origin. Petroleum based fuels are made from oil, and biogasoline is made from plants such as beets and sugarcane or cellulosic biomass which would normally be plant waste.