Emulsion fuels developer Quadrise and Australian bio-oil producer Licella have amended their joint development agreement for marine fuels, establishing a more detailed development plan and an updated testing schedule, Quadrise announced on Thursday.

The two companies have been collaborating since March 2025 on integrating Licella's bio-oil as a potential feedstock for Quadrise's marine fuel products, bioMSAR and bioMSAR Zero. Licella produces its bio-oil through hydrothermal liquefaction (HTL), a process that converts biomass residues and biowaste—including wood and agricultural waste—into a bio-oil that can be blended or refined into lower-carbon fuels.

Laboratory testing has already been conducted in both Australia and the United Kingdom. Final laboratory tests on refined Licella bio-oils are scheduled for the second half of 2026. If those tests prove successful, the companies intend to proceed to initial marine diesel engine testing, followed by larger third-party engine evaluations before advancing to trials on commercial vessels.

Quadrise noted that utilizing Licella's bio-oil could support broader adoption of bioMSAR in the shipping sector while alleviating price pressure associated with other biofuel feedstocks. Feedstock availability and cost have been persistent constraints on biofuel adoption in shipping, where demand from multiple sectors—including road transport and aviation—competes for limited supplies of used cooking oil, tallow, and other conventional bio-feedstocks.

"The combination of Quadrise emulsion technology and the abundant feedstocks offered by Licella's HTL technology offers an increasingly promising pathway to scalability of bioMSAR™ for the maritime industry, and a potential way of mitigating the price pressures with other bio-feedstocks," said Peter Borup, CEO of Quadrise.

MSAR (Multiphase Superfine Atomised Residue) is an emulsion fuel technology developed by Quadrise that produces a stable fuel from heavy residue streams, offering a lower-cost alternative to conventional marine fuel oil. The bioMSAR variant incorporates bio-based feedstocks to reduce the carbon footprint of the fuel, while bioMSAR Zero is designed as a net-zero-emission variant. The International Maritime Organization (IMO) has set a target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from international shipping by at least 50% by 2050 compared to 2008 levels, driving interest in alternative marine fuels including biofuels, ammonia, methanol, and hydrogen.

Hydrothermal liquefaction, the technology employed by Licella, operates by subjecting wet biomass to elevated temperatures and pressures in the presence of water, mimicking the natural geological processes that form fossil fuels but on a greatly accelerated timescale. The process can accept a wide range of feedstocks, including materials that are difficult to process through conventional biochemical or thermochemical routes. This feedstock flexibility is central to the partnership's premise: by tapping waste streams that do not compete with food production or established biofuel supply chains, the companies aim to offer shipping operators a lower-carbon fuel option that can be produced at meaningful scale.

Source: Ship & Bunker