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Biofuels are the sirens of renewable vitality, luring startups with enchanting guarantees of huge markets, from aviation to trucking and delivery. Corporations simply can’t assist throwing themselves on the downside, and various have been dashed to items within the course of.
One new startup, although, hopes it’s Ulysses on this story, capable of sail previous the rocky shores which have sunk various of its predecessors.
XFuel is pinning its hopes on a modular refinery design that it says can produce alternative fuels for marine delivery and diesel autos with a carbon footprint that’s as much as 85% decrease now and presumably carbon-neutral sooner or later.
Right now, the Dublin-based startup introduced an €8.2 million funding spherical led by AENU, a brand new German VC agency, and joined by Union Sq. Ventures and HAX/SOSV.
XFuel is at present making marine- and diesel-grade fuels and creating aviation fuels.
“It’s a direct alternative for the fossil counterparts,” co-founder and CEO Nicholas Ball mentioned. “The main focus right here was to develop a know-how to have the ability to produce gasoline at a comparable or cheaper price level than fossil fuels. We went down this R&D path for plenty of years, a number of trial- and-error-type work.”
The consequence, he mentioned, is an illustration plant in Spain that “proves out the know-how that we now have and the modularity that we’re making an attempt to embody right here.”
The center of XFuel’s work revolves round what the corporate calls mechanical catalytic conversion, which takes plant materials and makes use of warmth, chemical reactants and friction to assist break it down. (Ball, when pressed, wouldn’t be extra particular than that.)
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