The companies intend to cooperate to obtain the necessary European approvals for use of this fuel.
Amyris applies industrial synthetic biology to genetically modify micro-organisms to serve to produce a range of hydrocarbon products, including farnesene. Amyris modifies farnesene to become Amyris diesel.
The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has officially registered Amyris’s renewable diesel fuel at a 20% blend rate, the first time a hydrocarbon-based fuel made from plant-derived resources has been registered for commercial sale.
The company said that third-party testing indicates that this fuel, which is blended with petroleum diesel, overcomes a number of the challenges facing current biofuels.
Unlike biodiesel and ethanol, Amyris renewable diesel is a hydrocarbon, the same component found in petroleum fuels, enabling it to blend with petroleum diesel at much higher levels than typical biofuels without causing performance issues.
It works well at extremely low temperatures without having to alter engines and can be easily distributed within the existing fuels infrastructure and complies with American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) D-975 Table 1 specifications for petroleum diesel fuels.
The diesel contains zero sulfur and virtually no harmful aromatics, and when blended with petroleum diesel it results in significantly less particulate matter, NOx, hydrocarbon and carbon monoxide emissions than petroleum fuels.
