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First car driv­ing with Glob­al Bioen­er­gies’ renew­able gasoline

05.04.2018
Today, for the first time, Glob­al Bioen­er­gies (IBB net­work mem­ber) will use an EN228-com­pli­ant gas­ol­ine blend con­tain­ing over 34% of renew­able, isob­utene-derived, com­pounds to fuel a car on a cir­cuit. Glob­al Bioen­er­gies will also present the res­ults of pre­lim­in­ary engine test­ing con­duc­ted these past months by FEV, a European lead­er in engine-testing. In pre­par­a­tion of com­mer­cial uses, Glob­al Bioen­er­gies developed sev­er­al gas­ol­ine blends with two isob­utene-derived compounds: 
  • Isooctane, obtained by the con­dens­a­tion of two molecules of isob­utene fol­lowed by hydrogenation,
  • ETBE, obtained by the con­dens­a­tion of isob­utene and ethanol.
Both com­pounds are high-per­form­ance addit­ives (high octane rat­ing equal or high­er than 100) that have been in the past pro­duced from fossil oil. Glob­al Bioen­er­gies’ unique pro­cess allows to pro­duce the very same com­pounds from renew­able feed­stocks such as indus­tri­al-grade sug­ars, straw, resid­ual wood and poten­tially syn­gas. The blends pre­pared by incor­por­at­ing both ETBE and isooctane were designed for com­pli­ance with the EN228 norm, and are thus already author­ized for sale to any gas­ol­ine car own­er without any spe­cif­ic labeling require­ment. FEV, a Ger­man cor­por­a­tion lead­er in the field of engine-test­ing, ana­lyzed the char­ac­ter­ist­ics of these high octane fuel blends using a single cyl­in­der engine, a reli­able mod­el of four-stroke engines. Dr. Johannes Scharf, Vice Pres­id­ent Gas­ol­ine Power­trains at FEV Europe GmbH, states: « ETBE and isooctane are known to be very high-per­form­ance addit­ives, and the res­ults were gen­er­ally in line with expect­a­tions. Fur­ther­more, the prop­er­ties of the added fuel com­pon­ents may sug­gest some reduc­tion of particle emis­sions. We are eager to con­trib­ute to the devel­op­ment of high-renew­able-con­tent fuels lead­ing to reduced car­bon foot­print and improved air qual­ity. » An Audi A4 2.0 TFSI provided by the car­maker, Glob­al Bioen­er­gies’ long-term part­ner, will drive around the his­tor­ic­al and pres­ti­gi­ous Montl­héry speed ring. This event marks the launch of the next phase of com­mer­cial pre­par­a­tion: on-road test­ing using reg­u­lar vehicles. Rein­er Man­gold, Head of sus­tain­able product devel­op­ment at Audi, adds: « The object­ive of the part­ner­ship with Glob­al Bioen­er­gies is to devel­op sus­tain­able e‑benzin to our cus­tom­ers, as a con­tri­bu­tion of Audi to reduce the auto­mot­ive car­bon foot­print. The poten­tial CO2-sav­ings and emis­sion reduc­tion effects asso­ci­ated to drop-in syn­thet­ic fuels are import­ant assets in our e‑fuels strategy. » Marc Del­court, CEO of Glob­al Bioen­er­gies, con­cludes: « Today rep­res­ents a huge mile­stone for the Com­pany. Only a few years after our pro­cess moved into scale-up phase, we now see the con­crete trans­la­tion of all our efforts. The gas­ol­ine blend developed by the Com­pany and used here today in Montl­héry has an excep­tion­ally high con­tent in renew­able com­pounds. The mar­ket trend for clean­er, less pol­lut­ing energy sources is likely to be favor­able for such blends that match the European reg­u­lat­ory envir­on­ment. In our next phases, we will focus on the remain­ing tech­no­logy and busi­ness chal­lenges and pre­pare the com­mer­cial deploy­ment of the tech­no­logy.”

About GLOB­AL BIOENERGIES

Glob­al Bioen­er­gies is one of the few com­pan­ies world­wide, and the only one in Europe, that is devel­op­ing a pro­cess to con­vert renew­able resources into hydro­car­bons through fer­ment­a­tion. The Com­pany ini­tially focused its efforts on the pro­duc­tion of isob­utene, one of the most import­ant pet­ro­chem­ic­al build­ing blocks that can be con­ver­ted into fuels, plastics, organ­ic glass and elast­omers. Glob­al Bioen­er­gies con­tin­ues to improve the per­form­ance of its pro­cess, to oper­ate its demo plant in Ger­many, and to pre­pare the first full-scale plant through a joint ven­ture with Cristal Uni­on, named IBN-One. Glob­al Bioen­er­gies is lis­ted on Euronext Growth Par­is (FR0011052257 — ALGBE). Source: Glob­al Bioenergies
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