The innovations incorporated into the BTG process were designed to solve specific problems with more conventional biofuels technologies, leading to significant benefits:
- Flexible Feedstocks: By using chemical catalysts rather than enzymes, the BTG process is more robust and less sensitive to changes in feedstock. As a result, it can utilize many types of lignocellulosic feedstocks like wood, grass, agricultural waste, or other forms of solid waste.
- High Fuel Quality: The BioGasoline produced by BTG has a high octane rating (greater than 105 using the (R+M)/2 method), and lower blending vapor pressure (RVP) and higher energy density than conventional ethanol.
- Economically Competitive: The process simplifications enabled by the high performance catalysts and chemistry of the BTG process greatly reduce the capital requirements of this technology relative to both biological and gasification-based routes. High conversion efficiency maximizes product yield to reduce feedstock consumption, and energy-efficient process design keeps operating costs low.
- Sustainable: The BTG process can convert a wide range of non-food biomass sources into fuel, which can maximize the biodiversity of purpose-grown energy crops and maximize the return on farm crops by utilizing the large amount of inedible plant mass produced in agriculture. The process can also be designed to be self-sustaining, producing all of the required reactants, such as hydrogen and water, internally. These important features lead to a highly sustainable renewable fuel process.
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