Green Biologics, an Oxfordshire, UK company using biotechnology to produce a butanol-based fuel for transportation, has raised £1.58 million (about $3.2 million) in funding.
The company faces a number of competitors seeking to make alternative transport fuel from manufactured biofuels. Many of them are science projects, and are a year or two away from hitting the market. They include Amyris, Gevo, Synthetic Genomics and LS9 (see our coverage )
Investors in Green Biologics are Carbon Trust Investments and Oxford Capital Partners and existing investors.
GBL is developing something it calls Butafuel,™ which it says is a more environmentally friendly biofuel for transportation. Butafuel is based on a butanol alcohol produced by using microbes in a sugar fermentation process. In addition to butanol, the fermentation process produces acetone, an important solvent and chemical precursor for polymers and plastics. For its fermentation inputs, the company uses waste feedstocks such as paper and pulp, sugar processing, biodiesel production and food waste. See its statement here.
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VentureBeat » OPX receives $3.6M for synthesized fuel replacement said:
[...] which will give later entrants, which also include Gevo (our coverage) and Green Biologics (our coverage), some time to scale up. The potential upside to all for producing a cheaper alternative to [...]