Biomass to liquid (BTL) is a (multi step) process to produce liquid fuels out of biomass:

It mainly aims at using the whole plant to improve the CO_{2 balance and the costs.}

• Fischer Tropsch process is used to produce synfuels out of gasified biomass. While biodiesel and bio-ethanol production so far only use parts of a plant, i.e. oil, sugar or starch, BTL production uses the whole plant which is gasified by gasification. The result is that for BTL, less land area is required per unit of energy produced compared with biodiesel or bio-ethanol.
• Hydrogenation of plant oils (fatty acid esters) into alkanes, to produce diesel, first commercialized by Neste Oil as NExBTL.
• Flash Pyrolysis - producing sour oil, charcoals and gas at 450°C (also called anhydrous pyrolysis).

See also: Gas to liquid gasification

External links

• "Synthetic Diesel May Play a Significant Role as Renewable Fuel in Germany" at USDA FAS website
• Enzymatic Hydrolysis at DOE EERE website

Fuels | Renewable energy | Alternative propulsion | Energy development

BtL-Kraftstoff