eurOPEO BUTANEXT project: Innovating to create a more effective generation of biofuel

Technicians of the Department of Biomass of Cener (National Center for Renewable Energies), participate in a new eur OPEO project called Butanext (new generation biobutanol), which has been raised as a main objective to test, validate and optimize, both at the laboratory and pilot plant, each of the individual processes that are part of the chain of services that have as a consequence to produce biobutanol to a reasonable cost to a reasonable cost to a reasonable cost to a reasonable cost to a reasonable cost to a reason from lignocellulosic waste of biomass and garbage. In this way this project can contribute to achieving the objectives of ensuring that 10% of transport in Eur OPA come 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 Butanext project start meeting was held in Brussels last May. The project, which is coordinated by Green Biologics Ltd. (United Kingdom) is a consortium in which nine other eurOpeos partners also participate: techniques gathered, Cener, Zabala Innovation Consulting, the University of Castilla-La Mancha (Spain), Dyadic Nederland BV (Holland), C- tech innovation limited and e4tech (United Kingdom) Institute for Technological Research and Greenovate! EurOPE (Belgium).

It is a multidisciplinary consortium, since it is the presence of five SMEs, a large company and three technology and research centers located in different eurcountries. All of them will develop new technologies that will reduce the current costs of biobutanol production through the use of more sustainable raw materials, the improvement of conversion yields, the efficiency of the processes and the reduction of 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 Innovation and Innovation Program Horizon 2020 of the EurOPEA Union (Agreement No. 640462), it is planned that it lasts for 36 months and has a budget of 4,599,414 euryou.