Butanext European project: innovating to create a more effective generation of biofuels

Technicians from the Biomass department of CENER (National Center for Renewable Energy), participate in a new European project called ButaNext (New Generation Biobutanol), whose main objective is to test, validate and optimize, both on a laboratory and scale scale. pilot plant, each of the individual processes that are part of the service chain that results in producing biobutanol at a reasonable cost, from lignocellulosic biomass waste and garbage. In this way, this project can contribute to achieving the objectives of ensuring that 10% of transport in Europe comes from renewable energy sources by 2020.

The development of new and improved processes and techniques based on the production of biobutanol under more economically advantageous conditions will give rise to a new generation of biofuels that are much more sustainable from an economic, social and environmental point of view.

The kick-off meeting of the ButaNext project was held in Brussels last May. The project, which is coordinated by Green Biologics Ltd. (United Kingdom) is a consortium in which nine other European partners also participate: Técnicas Reunidas, CENER, Zabala Innovation Consulting, the University of Castilla-La Mancha (Spain), Dyadic Nederland BV (Netherlands), C- TECH Innovation Limited and E4tech (United Kingdom), and VITO – Flemish Institute for Technological Research and Greenovate! Europe (Belgium).

It is a multidisciplinary consortium, since it has the presence of five SMEs, a large company and three technology and research centers located in different European countries. All of them will develop new technologies that will reduce the current costs of biobutanol production through the use of more sustainable raw materials, improving conversion yields, process efficiency and reducing their environmental impact.

Based on the final product, the most appropriate mixtures of biobutanol with fossil fuels (gasoline and diesel) and conventional biofuels (ethanol and biodiesel) will be defined to improve their behavior and carry out a selection and validation of the best ones for use in the engine of a vehicle.

CENER plays a relevant role in the consortium in which it participates as scientific coordinator and leads the work package aimed at the integration and scaling up in a pilot plant of the pretreatment processes, enzymatic hydrolysis, fermentation and recovery of biobutanol “in situ”. All these activities will be carried out at CENER's Second Generation Biofuels Center (CB2G), located in the Navarrese town of Aoiz.

The ButaNext project, which has been approved within the topic “LCE-11-2014 Developing next generation technologies for biofuels and sustainable alternative fuels” of the Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation program of the European Union (agreement no. 640462), is expected to be extended for 36 months and has a budget of 4,599.414 euros.