NorthStar BTX’s competitive edge lies in its patented Polaris™ BTX process, which sharply contrasts conventional gasoline additives, BTX, and aromatic compound manufacturing. Traditional BTX production is extremely energy-intensive, relying on multi-step catalytic reforming of naphtha or steam cracking that demands high temperatures (typically 850°C) and substantial hydrogen inputs, resulting in high costs, complexity, and environmental burden. In contrast, the Polaris™ BTX single-step catalytic process operates at significantly lower temperatures and with much lower energy requirements. This streamlined approach eliminates the need for multiple processing units, ebullated bed reactors, and extensive downstream equipment—yielding major reductions in capital expenditure (CapEx), operational simplicity, and labor requirements—all of which improve the ease of commercial implementation and production scaling.
A further advantage is the adaptability of product selectivity: Polaris BTX output can be tuned between different aromatic fractions according to real-time market conditions, enhancing profitability and hedging against commodity price swings. Critically, Polaris™ BTX produces a product slate that aligns directly with the fastest-growing needs of the renewable gasoline and SAF markets, including a high proportion of trimethylbenzene, xylenes (notably paraxylene), and toluene, vital as SAF additives and precursors for PET plastics and final octane enhancers. The process also uses renewable or waste-derived feedstocks, enabling a lower-carbon footprint and highly favorable positioning amid tightening global environmental regulations.
Additional processing options that allow flexibility between producing gasoline-range and jet/diesel-range products, as well as the ability to use existing equipment for biogenic feedstock-only operations
Through Polaris BTX technology, NorthStar BTX provides drop-in renewable gasoline additives to de-fossilize transportation fuel by replacing fossil components with chemically identical molecules derived from biomass-generated syngas for the scalable and affordable production of renewable gasoline additives. CO2 emitted from 1G ethanol production offers an ideal route and market scale for commercial applications of the Polaris BTX technology to achieve cost parity at the pump with traditional fossil additives, regardless of regulatory incentives.
In terms of both ecology and economics, Polaris BTX technology also provides immediately meaningful applications in the co-processing of CO2 at existing refinery infrastructure (both biogenic and fossil feedstocks) as it's fully compatible with existing refinery units and Polaris BTX byproducts actually improve refining efficiency by exchanging CO for higher BTU byproducts onsite.
Validation and optimization with the leading U.S. labs and licensed intellectual property originating from university research (Georgia Tech and Mississippi State University) further insulate NorthStar from competitors and potential IP risks. These combined factors make NorthStar BTX uniquely capable of supplying cost-effective, sustainable aromatics with drop-in compatibility for fuels and chemicals markets.