Vertimass and European Energy have completed a Letter of Intent (LOI) to integrate technologies for capturing carbon dioxide and converting it into hydrocarbon products around the world.

This combination takes advantage of European Energy’s expertise in capturing carbon dioxide from waste sources (carbon dioxide produced from anaerobic digestion, power production, fermentations, and cement manufacture) to produce methanol, as well as Vertimass’ technology to convert that methanol into jet, diesel, and gasoline fuels and chemicals. The team completed an initial proof of concept laboratory research for coupling their technologies earlier this year.

Vertimass looks forward to feeding methanol made from carbon dioxide using renewable electricity by European Energy technology to our unique single-stage reactor to make hydrocarbons. Combining these technologies could not only produce Sustainable Aviation Fuels (SAFs) and other hydrocarbon fuels with net zero carbon emissions but also mitigate climate change by converting carbon dioxide into renewable plastics, thus permanently removing this greenhouse gas from the atmosphere.

—Vertimass CEO Charles Wyman

European Energy is committed to take a central position in the green transition and use so-called Power-to-X processes to bring renewable electricity into sectors that are difficult to electrify directly. European Energy sees a great potential to expand the application of our renewable e-methanol especially as a feedstock for Sustainable Aviation Fuels through the unique single-stage process from Vertimass.

—Søren Knudsen Kær , Head of Technology, Power-to-X of European Energy

Vertimass’ technology sustainably produces fuels and chemicals from methanol, ethanol, and other renewable alcohols with high yields that can significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions compared to sourcing these products from petroleum. The simplicity of this single reaction stage results in low capital and operating costs. The technology originated from Oak Ridge National Laboratories operated by UT-Battelle, with Vertimass obtaining worldwide exclusive rights in 2014.

Blue Biofuels expands technology license agreement with Vertimass. Separately, Vertimass and Blue biofuels have expanded on their previous license agreement to allow Blue Biofuels to convert additional volumes of ethanol into renewable jet fuel and other bio-hydrocarbons using Vertimass technology.

Many countries are beginning to mandate that a percentage of jet fuel used by commercial airlines comes from renewable sources. The Vertimass technology will enable Blue Biofuels to produce sustainable aviation fuel to help achieve that mandate. We aim to expand further into the supply chain with complementary technologies and become a total supplier of bio-fuels, bioplastics and bio-chemicals.

—Ben Slager, CEO of Blue Biofuels