Amyris and São Paulo Begin Trial of Sugarcane Renewable Diesel in Buses

25 July 2010

VNews. Amyris Brasil S.A. and the city of São Paulo, Brazil have begun a pilot project in which three urban public bus transport will be supplied with 5% renewable diesel produced from sugarcane feedstock. Three others will be fueled by 100% renewable diesel. Also involved in the trial are Daimler and Petrobras.

Amyris Brasil is a majority-owned subsidiary of US-based Amyris Biotechnologies, and was established to support technology scale-up leading toward commercialization of Amyris renewable product.

Amyris applies industrial synthetic biology to genetically modify microorganisms to serve to produce a broad range of products, including farnesene. Farnesene is an isoprenoid molecule that, when used as a fuel precursor, can be hydrogenated to farnesane, which has a high cetane number (58). Amyris modifies farnesene to become Amyris diesel. The company recently entered an off-take agreement with Shell. (Earlier post.)

Amyris Brasil says that a renewable fuel plant in Saint Martin should become operational next year and will be marketing the renewable diesel immediately thereafter.