Aemetis Inc. announced distilled biodiesel produced by its subsidiary in India has been used by bulk customers to replace 100 percent petroleum diesel with 100 percent distilled biodiesel, reducing emissions by 80 percent and providing cost savings to customers.

Traditionally, in Europe and the U.S., biodiesel is blended in the range of 5 to 20 percent with petroleum diesel due to colder temperature conditions. With Southern and Western India's tropical climate, Aemetis led the introduction of 100 percent distilled biodiesel in truck, bus, taxi and stationary generator sectors as a 100 percent replacement of petroleum diesel.

The 99.8 percent pure distilled biodiesel produced by Aemetis has superior attributes such as a high cetane number (66-68) compared to the regular biodiesel cetane number of about 51 along with excellent lubricating properties to reduce engine wear.

The India diesel market is currently estimated at 25 billion gallons per year, which is significantly larger than the current India gasoline market of 5 billion gallons per year. The current biodiesel production capacity in India is only about 250 million gallons.

Aemetis now has multiple sales channels in India, directly selling to bulk businesses and selling through government-owned oil marketing companies (OMCs). Aemetis is currently selling biodiesel to a large OMC in addition to a number of major transportation and logistics businesses.

“We are excited to lead the replacement of 100 percent petroleum diesel with 100 percent distilled biodiesel in India where 13 Indian cities rank among the 20 most polluted cities in the world,” said Eric McAfee, chairman and CEO of Aemetis.

“We have succeeded in working with major bulk fuel customers to convert their fleets to 100 percent distilled biodiesel to achieve significant cost benefits as well as help improve the environment,” said Sanjeev Gupta, managing director of Aemetis’ India biofuels subsidiary, Universal Biofuels, based in Hyderabad.

Aemetis owns and operates a biodiesel production facility with a capacity of approximately 50 MMgy near Kakinada, located on the East Coast of India. After the recent deregulation of diesel prices and approval for direct market access, Aemetis’ Universal Biofuels subsidiary expanded its sales team and increased production.