March 20, 2013. John Sofranko’s idea, backed by decades of experience, sounds like a slam dunk. He founded Bio2electric, based at the Sarnoff Center, to convert errant polluting natural gas — the stuff flaring up from offshore oil platforms or seeping from landfills — into gasoline that could power any car.

After an arduous application process, his start-up was recently awarded a $600,000 Department of Energy contract to fund early research. Chances of success? “Five percent,” says Sofranko cheerfully enough. “Well, before the contract, I would have said 5 percent. Now it’s more like 10 percent. But in a year, when the contract ends, it could be more like 25 to 30 percent.” A second, much larger, contract could follow the first, and chances of success would rise substantially.

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February 3, 2013. Chemist John Sofranko says the best time to start your own company is at the beginning of your career or at the end.

Lucky for him, starting his company at the end of his career provided him with a wealth of knowledge in a now-prominent scientific field of study.

His 3-year-old company, Bio2Electric, is developing technologies for the conversion of bio-renewable fuels to power. Most recently, the company received a $600,000 grant from the Department of Energy to create a reactor that converts natural gas to gasoline while also creating energy.

Read the full article at The Times of Trenton …

January 16, 2013. Bio2Electric, an energy technology company on Washington Road in the Sarnoff Center, was one of 66 companies to receive a $600,000 grant from the federal government.

The company’s project to convert natural gas into liquid fuel was selected by the U.S. Energy Department’s Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA-E) to receive a total of $130 million in funding through its “OPEN 2012” program. Funding ranged from almost $5 million to about $400,000.

Read the full article at U.S. 1 …

December 12, 2012. Township-based company Bio2Electric was selected last month to receive a grant of $600,000 to develop a small-scale reactor that converts natural gas into a liquid transportation fuel, officials said.

Bio2Electric’s project was one of 66 cutting-edge research projects selected by the Energy Department’s Advanced Research Projects Agency — Energy (ARPA-E) to receive a total of $130 million in funding through its “OPEN 2012” program.

Read the full article at The Times of Trenton …

November 28, 3012. Bio2Electric will develop a small-scale reactor that converts natural gas into a liquid transportation fuel by combining fuel cell technology with advanced catalysts. Conventional large-scale gasto-liquid reactors produce waste-heat, reducing the energy efficiency of the process. In contrast, this reactor produces electricity as a byproduct of fuel production. If successful, this small-scale reactor could be deployed in remote locations to provide not only liquid fuel but also electricity, increasing the utility of geographically isolated gas reserves.

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