By the end of 2017, Wilmington-based Butamax Advanced Biofuels, a joint venture of BP and DuPont, hopes to replace ethanol at gas stations with a new biofuel called biobutanol.
The U.S. has a long history of producing butanol, most notably as an industrial solvent in plants that manufactured explosives during the First and Second World Wars. But its potential to be used to fuel cars emerged in the last twenty years.
Biobutanol has many advantages over ethanol. The product that’s being developed at Dupont’s Experimental Research Station has 25 percent more energy per gallon than ethanol. It’s also less corrosive than ethanol, making it more compatible with existing fuel infrastructures and pipelines,
Terry Papoutsakis, a chemistry engineering professor at University of Delaware, says that the biggest hurdle for biobutanol is cost.
“We can produce butanol. We have been producing it for more than 100 years," said Papoutsakis. "But the cost of production is not quite yet as effective as it is with ethanol.”
There's another factor that could help biobutanol forward. After more than four years, a patent dispute between Butamax and Gevo over the development of biobutanol ended in late August.
Butamax accused the Colorado-based Gevo of stealing the fermentation technology used to produce biobutanol. Biobutanol is a biofuel that could potentially replace ethanol. Among its advantages, biobutanol contains 25 percent more energy per gallon than ethanol.
Papoutsakis, who formerly served on the scientific advisory board for Gevo, says the success of biobutanol depends on the improvement of fermentation technology, which would lead to lower production costs.
“If the tech improves and we expect that it will, then we will have a good penetration of biobutanol as a biofuel with time," said Papoutsakis. "And I think this would be a good thing overall to move towards sustainable fuel production.”