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Technip signs on for construction engineering of wood-to-gasoline facility

CORE BioFuel Inc. has selected energy-industry specialist Technip to complete the construction engineering for its first wood-to-gasoline biorefinery. CORE is targeting a site in Houston, B.C. for the facility. The plant will produce 67 million litres of renewable gasoline and generate over 20 million litres of water annually from wood waste.
George Stanko, president of CORE BioFuel, states: “We are very excited about working with Technip to provide the next step in our commercialization process, which is to complete the engineering for our first plant. Technip, as a leader in syngas plant design, is uniquely positioned to support CORE through the critical engineering phase of commercialization.”

CORE Biofuel’s Green Gasoline is a 94-octane, clean-burning alternative to conventional gasoline from petroleum sources. The company’s MKS Gasoline Synthesis Process™  produces gasoline from cellulosic biomass, using an intermediate syngas step. By-products of the process are water, electricity to run the plant and carbon dioxide suitable for commercial use. The process has been described as a variant of ExxonMobil’s methanol-to-gasoline process, in which CORE has eliminated the methanol step.

Last fall, under contract with CORE, RECAT Technologies Inc. successfully completed a set of test runs of the catalytic reaction producing gasoline from dimethyl ether (DME), the only to date non-commercialized step in CORE’s patent pending process.

RECAT Technologies Inc. is an affiliated spinoff of the University of Western Ontario in London, Ont.