NXTClean Fuels, BioVeritas partner to unlock cellulosic waste streams for biobased diesel

NXTClean Fuels Inc., a renewable fuels project developer and operator headquartered in Houston, Texas, and BioVeritas LLC, a sustainable fuels and chemicals technology company based in Bryan, Texas, announced May 11 the signing of a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to collaborate on the development of Biomass Processing Centers in Oregon, Washington and Idaho.

The partnership is designed to unlock one of the most abundant and underutilized feedstock opportunities in American agriculture: cellulosic waste and residue streams.

NXTClean Fuels has been developing its large renewable diesel and sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) project in Port Westward, Oregon, for years.  

The project has secured state of Oregon permits and is advancing through federal permitting.

BioVeritas is a portfolio company of Ara Partners, a global private equity, infrastructure and energy firm focused on decarbonizing the industrial economy.

Through the proprietary BioVeritas Process™, agricultural residues—including rye and grass straws, wheat stover, corn stover and other cellulosic materials—will be converted into a novel class of intermediates trademarked “KEYtones™” that are compatible with the hydrotreated esters and fatty acids (HEFA) refining process.

This breakthrough enables the production of multiple high-value sustainable fuel products, including SAF, ultra-low sulfur renewable No. 1 diesel fuel, and ultra-low sulfur renewable distillate paraffinic marine fuel.

“Cellulosic agricultural residues have been a stranded resource for decades,” said NXTClean Fuels CEO Christopher Efird. “Our collaboration with BioVeritas gives us a proven, scalable pathway to transform these waste streams into jet and diesel fuel from materials that would otherwise be burned or left to decompose. This is the kind of integrated, feedstock-to-fuel solution the sustainable fuels industry has been waiting for.”

The HEFA process is currently the world’s dominant pathway for producing SAF and renewable diesel, yet, according to NXTClean Fuels, its growth has been constrained by competition for a limited pool of conventional feedstocks—primarily used cooking oil and animal fats.

Together, NXTClean Fuels said it and BioVeritas are addressing this bottleneck at its root.

The BioVeritas Process™ converts cellulosic biomass, specifically the lignocellulosic fractions of agricultural residues that are incompatible with conventional HEFA refineries, into KEYtones™, a clean, distilled, chemically pure intermediate that integrates seamlessly into existing HEFA infrastructure.

This means no new refinery technology is required—the same world-class HEFA assets can now process cellulosic-derived KEYtones™, dramatically broadening the feedstock base and increasing the addressable volume of sustainable fuel production.

The resulting fuel slate is broad and commercially significant, according to NXTClean Fuels.

“The Pacific Northwest produces millions of tons of cellulosic residues annually,” said Alan Del Paggio, the chief commercial officer with BioVeritas. “The BioVeritas Process™ reframes these residues as a premium renewable feedstock, and working with NXTClean Fuels allows us to bring that transformation to commercial scale in a region already committed to clean-energy leadership. We are not just producing sustainable fuels—we are creating a new, durable supply chain from the ground up.”