Novel Technology development for the conversion of biomass to bio-oil

KiOR Inc., a joint venture between Khosla Ventures and BIOeCON, will develop and commercialize Biomass Catalytic Cracking (BCC) technology. BCC technology converts lignocellulosic biomass into a bio-crude which is suitable for upgrading to transportation fuels. This offers significant commercial benefits including using harvesting waste rather than food crops; environmental sustainability; reduced reliance on fossil fuels; and enabling economic development in rural areas.

The key technical problem addresses by BCC is opening up the solid fibrous woody material so that it can be transformed. The existing state-of-the-art processes are costly and energy or chemicals intensive. BIOeCON has developed a simple non-energy-intensive way to make woody biomass accessible to catalysts, which enables the conversion of the biomass in to a bio-crude with good product properties.