Top 50 Hottest Projects in Advanced Bioeconomy for 2022 – Virent 

The Digest, a biofuels publication, has honored Virent Inc., a fully owned subsidiary of Marathon Petroleum, for its innovation and accomplishments in biobased fuels, chemicals, and materials by developing enterprises. Virent’s demonstration plant was ranked 16th out of more than 10,000 eligible projects at The Digest’s spring 2022 leadership conference for the Top 50 Hottest Projects in the Advanced Bioeconomy for 2022. This year’s award was centred on advanced bioeconomy manufacturing facilities that were finished or still under construction and operated at pilot, demonstration, or industrial levels to produce intermediates or final goods. 
 
Over 30,000 gallons of BioFormate® product have been generated in Virent’s Eagle demonstration plant in Madison, Wisconsin. Aqueous carbohydrate solutions created from renewable feedstocks are transformed into mixes of hydrocarbons by Virent’s BioForming® method, which are the same as those present in today’s petroleum products. These biobased components can be added to the infrastructure already in place and used to make chemicals, jet fuel, gasoline, and diesel.

Virent

Both chemicals and fuels have been employed in commercial demonstration volumes of this product. This includes the Synthesized Aromatic Kerosene (SAK) that was utilised in one of the engines on United’s most recent historic commercial flight, which used 100% Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF). 
 
According to Dave Kettner, president of Virent, “This is an exciting acknowledgement of the Eagle demo plant by The Digest’s readers, among many other incredible initiatives, as Virent continues to promote BioFormate® technology and ensure commercial readiness through this demonstration.”