Long term, biobutanol is a direct 'Drop-In' replacement for gasoline and has significant potential as an alternative fuel blend with ethanol (in E-85 as a replacement for gasoline). The fuel blend opportunity for biobutanol alone exceeds $80 billion. The overall biofuel opportunity for butanol is $700 billion.
Biobutanol has many advantages both as a direct biofuel and as a biofuel blend to existing fuels (both gasoline and diesel):
- Has an energy value of 110,000 BTU/Gal, similar to gasoline (114,000) and much higher than ethanol (76,100).
- Is non-corrosive and can be shipped via pipeline rather than in rail tanks and tank trucks.
- Can be blended up to 40% with diesel fuel.
- Lower emissions: reduces hydrocarbon emissions by 95%; carbon monoxide to .01%; and oxides of nitrogen by 37%.
- Can be made from a wide variety of non-food feedstocks such as wood and forest residues, temperate prairie grasses, corn stover, bagasse, and green bio-waste as well as low cost sugar crops such as sweet sorghum or sugar beets.
Biobutanol is an EPA-approved Advanced Biofuel and has incredible long term potential as an alternative biofuel as the production economics of biobutanol bring down the blend cost as a fuel. This will continue to drive our long term R&D efforts at GBL as we commercialize chemical grade biobutanol.