Neste Oil, ZeaChem, BlueFire Renewables, Sapphire Energy win Project of the Year awards

In Florida, Biofuels Digest announced that LanzaTech, the partnership of Rentech and ClearFuels Technology, the partnership of Taurus Energy and SEKAB, and Renewable Energy Group won Technology of the Year awards, among this year’s roster of Biofuels Digest Award winners.

Technology of the Year Awards recognized pre-pilot, pilot, demonstration-scale and commercial-scale installations.

LanzaTech is commercializing the fermentation of waste steel gases into ethanol and other bio-based chemicals, with a pilot in New Zealand and a forthcoming demonstration of its technology in China. Rentech and ClearFuels have combined on a gasification and Fisher-Tropsch processing of biomass into synthetic jet or diesel fuels, in a project that will be built at Rentech’s Product Demonstration Unit in Colorado, and has been supported by a $23 million grant from the US Department of Energy.  Taurus Energy and SEKAB have combined on a cellulosic ethanol process, using Taurus Energy’s yeast strains and SEKAB’s demonstration-scale cellulosic ethanol plant in Sweden. Renewable Energy Group was honored for its novel continuous-flow, multi-feedstock processing technology that has allowed the company to pioneer the acquisition of a wide variety of hard-to-process, low-cost feedstocks such as tallows and yellow grease.

The Project of the Year award went to Neste Oil for the completion and start-up of its massive 240 million gallon renewable diesel plant in Singapore. On Neste, earlier this month, we wrote: “In renewable diesel there are two companies that are getting it done, in terms of putting fuel on the street in meaningful volumes. Those are Dynamic Fuels and Neste Oil. Dynamichas just this year completed construction of a 75 million gallon plant in Geismar, Louisiana… Bigger even than that is Neste Oil, which debuted its first NExBTL facility in Finland, at its Porvoo refinery in summer 2007. Its second facility came on stream there in 2009. They both have a capacity of 190, 000 tons per year – or a combined capacity of 130 million gallons.  Last month, Neste started up the world’s largest NExBTL plant in Singapore, with a capacity of 800,000 t/a, or 240 million gallons. It has a similar-sized facility under construction in Rotterdam, which is due to be commissioned in the first half of 2011. In all, that’s 600 million gallons of advanced biofuels capacity coming online by 2011.”

For Project Structure, Biofuels Digest recognized ZeaChem, for creativity in financial structure, as well as BlueFire Renewables, for off-take and feedstock contracting. Sapphire Energy received the “Plan for Scale” award for its design of its  algal biofuels system with planned demonstration scale facility in 2014 and first commercial facility in 2018.

The Biofuels Digest awards, first established in 2008, recognize excellence in the research, development and commercialization of biofuels, renewable chemicals and bio-based products. The awards are voted by the Biofuels Digest editorial board, based on nominations submitted by the Digest’s readership.