History

In februari 2008 ACE started the preparations to introduce Biofuel in Aviation. Looking for a large piston engined aircraft to perform the role of technology demonstrator, we found a Grumman Tracker owned by Al Hansen and parked in in his hangar with more memorial aircrafts in the Mojave desert. It was still in a VFR flying condition and used for demonstration flights. Ben and one of his mechanics undertook a inspection mission to inspect all components and condition of the aircraft in february 2008.

Despite it being an enticing aircraft type and an adventure to fly in, this one needed too much repairs to one of the engines as well as all avionics and therefore found unsuitable for the challenging time frame.

By chance we stumbled across a hangar housing Antonov 2 N244MJ, in excellent condition. This machine showed merely 80 hours and sported a brand new propeller, completely overhauled cockpit and full leather interior. The aircraft was bought by Al hansen in 2004 for his film industry aviation support business in delivering aircrafts for the use in filmsets. This Antanov was once used in a film with president Ford a a means of transportation. In those four years he had only flown some 50 hours on the aircraft having then when we found it a total of some 80 hours on the engine and propellor and 16 years on the wingfabric. This aircraft was also upgraded with a VIP interior in Litouwen and in the USA totally upgraded the avionics section including a autopilot and a garmin 430 navigation set.

So after doing some research in the Netherlands and Poland, negotiations were started and in April 2008 ACE purchased Antonov N244MJ.

From that moment the Biofuel development changed into high gear, with ACE being integrated with other high tech potentials in the Twente area by attending a year a business development program with Venturelab, the commercial breeding ground of the Technical University of Twente. Ben founded the company CTDC BV in May 2009 and quickly reshaped the location into an engineering High Tech R&D center to develop and test Biofuel and Aircraft engines at former RNLAF Air Base Twente (EHTW) and in June 2009 the plant was ready to start testing. The testresults were very promising and showed a 7% C02 reduction at the exhaustpipe and 87% in the total chain of energy production and usage possible with only a mixture of 30/70 bio mass-Avgas

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There are only three of these testlocations in the Netherlands, two of them on the two remaining f-16 airbases and the third on the former airforcebase Twente of which to CTDC took the initiative torebuild the location back to operation status taking the aviation and bio energy technical track The target CTDC has is to introduce Bio-energy through rapid prototyping into the aviation industry, and then share the knowledge through training and licencing to all interested parties to distribute the Co2 reduction worldwide within the coming 10 years.

For the static ground testing CTDC acquired in april 2010 a Polish AN2, SP-FVB and this was flown to EHTW. This Polish bird is the initial Bio test bed, to prove the quality and performance of our Biofuel. The results were used further on the Bio Bird 1 the N244Mj flown Trans Atlantic across the North Atlantic Ocean from Fox Lancaster Airport California USA via Canada, Greenland, Iceland, Scotland, England to the Netherlands in August 2010. The radial engine has proven an ideal R&D testplatform for initial unstable Bio Fuels underdevelopment and still perform safe and satisfactory.