ExxonMobil Research and Engineering Co. (EMRE) has entered into a licensing agreement with Sundrop Fuels for EMRE’s methanol-to-gasoline (MTG) technology.

Sundrop Fuels will apply the technology at its planned biomass fuels plant near Alexandria, Louisiana, officials said.

The biomass complex will gasify forest waste supplemented with hydrogen produced from natural gas to make synthesis gas.

The syngas then will be converted to methanol and fed into the MTG process, producing 3,500 bpd of renewable gasoline.

The MTG process converts crude methanol directly into low sulfur, low benzene gasoline.

Although the original application of the MTG technology processed methanol from natural gas, the same technology can be used for methanol from other sources such as coal, petcoke and biomass.