eurButanext project: innovating to create a more effective generation of biofuels

Technicians from the Biomass Department of CENER (National Renewable Energy Centre) are participating in a new European project eur ButaNext (New Generation Biobutanol). Its main objective is to test, validate, and optimize, at both laboratory and pilot plant scales, each of the individual processes in the service chain that results in the production of biobutanol at a reasonable cost from lignocellulosic biomass waste and refuse. In this way, the project can contribute to achieving the goal of having 10% of transport in Eur powered by 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 lead to a new generation of biofuels that are much more sustainable from an economic, social and environmental point of view.

The ButaNext project kickoff meeting was held in Brussels last May. The project, coordinated by Green Biologics Ltd. (UK), is a consortium that also includes nine other eurpartners: Técnicas Reunidas, CENER, Zabala Innovation Consulting, the University of Castilla-La Mancha (Spain), Dyadic Nederland BV (Netherlands), C-TECH Innovation Limited and E4tech (UK), and VITO – Flemish Institute for Technological Research and Greenovate! Eur(Belgium).

This is a multidisciplinary consortium, comprising five SMEs, one large company, and three technology and research centers located in different eurcountries. Together, they will develop new technologies to reduce current biobutanol production costs through the use of more sustainable raw materials, improved conversion rates, increased process efficiency, and a reduced environmental impact.

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

CENER plays a key role in the consortium, participating as scientific coordinator and leading the work package aimed at integrating and scaling up the pretreatment, enzymatic hydrolysis, fermentation, and biobutanol recovery processes in a pilot plant. All these activities will be carried out at CENER's Second Generation Biofuels Center (CB2G), located in Aoiz, Navarre.

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 EurUnion’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation program (agreement no. 640462), is planned to last for 36 months and has a budget of 4,599,414 eur.