Heard on the Floor at ABLC 2021 – Day 1

October 28, 2021 |

ABLC 2021 opens this morning after an informal day of networking, but already the 500+ attendees are buzzing about a series of announces, and many more to come as the Advanced Bioeconomy Leadership Conference resumes live in person.

Some of the hot news items are:

Mura Technology Launches U.S. Division and Announces Washington State as the Location for its First Commercial Project. Mura Technology, the UK-based pioneer of HydroPRS™ (Hydrothermal Plastic Recycling

System), an advanced process capable of recycling mixed plastic waste, today announced the launch of its US project development business. Washington State will be the site of its first U.S. project, named Mura Cascade ELP. 

Jon Cozens, President, Mura North America, said: “Our goal is not to be disruptive, but to be complementary. We want to take the parts of the waste industry that work well and complement them with our ability to recycle plastics that cannot be conventionally recycled. Mura want to be at the forefront of the advanced recycling sector, deploying a fleet of well-structured, risk-mitigated, standardized and successful projects. Washington State is the ideal location in which to do that, and we have great partners in DTG Recycle with which to deploy our first US project. To provide Cascade with the raw material, Mura turned to DTG Recycle of Bothell, Washington. DTG processes nearly 3,000 tons of material daily across its nine material recovery facilities and is the largest recycler of commercial, industrial, construction, and demolition waste in the Pacific Northwest. DTG and Mura have entered into an exclusive partnership for 100% of the Cascade plant feedstock needs for the first 20 years of operation, including the first phase and the expansion to the second phase.

Shell selects Worley for a major low-carbon fuels project in the Netherlands. Worley has been selected to provide detailed design and procurement services to support the development of a low-carbon fuels facility at the Shell Energy and Chemicals Park Rotterdam in the Netherlands, formerly known as the Pernis refinery. Once built, it’s expected to be one of the biggest of its kind in Europe. The facility will produce 820,000 tonnes of sustainable aviation fuel and renewable diesel every year. These fuels will be produced from waste including used cooking oil, certified sustainable vegetable oils, waste animal fat and other industrial and agricultural residue using advanced technology developed by Shell. They will be used for blending in support of the EU legislation and commitments under the Paris Agreement.

 

Reducing CO2 using a Panchromatic Osmium Complex Photosensitizer. Using photocatalysts to reduce CO2 has received a lot of attention recently. Scientists from Tokyo Tech have developed a new osmium complex that can absorb a full wavelength range of visible light and act as a panchromatic redox photosensitizer for CO2 reduction. The team combined this complex with a ruthenium (II) catalyst and successfully reduced CO2 into formic acid. This research is published in Chemical Science, the Royal Society of Chemistry’s peer-reviewed flagship journal and is a free to read article. https://www.titech.ac.jp/english/news/2021/062155.html

Sulzer enabling production of 70’000 tonnes of biomass pellets per year – a carbon-neutral alternative to coal 

The innovative EU-funded Arbaflame project is aiming to produce 70’000 tonnes biomass-based combustibles per year to enable clean power generation. The biomass pellets are made of wood and can be used as a 100% sustainable alternative to coal in power plants to produce carbon-neutral power. Sulzer Chemtech’s separation equipment will play a key role in Arbaflame’s pellet production process, minimizing energy usage while maximizing the recovery of highly useful chemicals generated as by-products in the process, further supporting the circular economy.

Digest readers of a certain age will recall Mercurius Biofuels, and may have felt that the company and its REACH technology were written out of the series at some stage, but here in the bioeonomy’s most recent and so-far transcendent third act will be delighted to return that our friends have returned from their off-stage adventures and Mercurius has a pilot now up and running in the town of Mackay, in the northeastern Australian state of Queensland, a tropical locale so luscious and unexpected that we’d better explain what happened along the way.

Mercurius has finalized commissioning and is about to commence operations at their pilot plant that will use their patented REACH technology to produce valuable renewable chemicals, diesel and jet fuel from sugarcane waste. Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said Mackay, which is in the heart of sugarcane country, was the perfect place for this trial to take place. “I first met with Mercurius on a trade mission to the United States in 2017,” the Premier said. “They were attracted to Queensland because of my government’s commitment to developing a biofuels industry here. This project signals the start of a new industry for the region which means local jobs and further strengthens Mackay’s credentials as a leading biorefinery location. The REACH process avoids the need for the use of pure sugars, high operating temperatures and high pressures, resulting in faster conversion rate and lower cost of production than current processes.

ADM, Gevo Sign MoU to Produce up to 500M Gallons of Sustainable Aviation Fuel. ADM Columbus and Cedar Rapids dry mills as well as ethanol assets from Decatur operations would transition from fuel ethanol to serving growing demand for lower-carbon aviation fuel. ADM and Gevo signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to support the production of sustainable aviation fuel and other low carbon-footprint hydrocarbon fuels.

The MoU contemplates the production of both ethanol and isobutanol that would then be transformed into renewable low carbon-footprint hydrocarbons, including SAF, using Gevo’s processing technology and capabilities. About 900 million gallons of ethanol produced at ADM’s dry mills in Columbus, Nebraska, and Cedar Rapids, Iowa, as well as its Decatur, Illinois, complex, is expected to be processed utilizing this technology, resulting in approximately 500 million gallons of SAF and other renewable hydrocarbons. The isobutanol is expected to be produced at a proposed new facility in Decatur that would employ ADM’s carbon capture and sequestration capabilities.

Carbon Recycling International And Johnson Matthey Collaborate To Support Sustainable Methanol. Carbon Recycling International and Johnson Matthey have agreed on a long term exclusive catalyst supply agreement for the use of JM’s KATALCO methanol catalysts in CRI’s Emissions-To-Liquids designed CO2 to methanol plants.  This combined offering helps meet the urgent need to remove carbon emissions in hard-to-decarbonise sectors of the economy.Conventional methanol production involves fossil feedstocks such as natural gas or coal. Methanol manufactured with CRI’s ETL process using JM catalysts provides a highly effective route to sustainable methanol from CO2. This can be recovered from either industrial processes or biomass, such as waste and residues, or atmospheric sources. This technology will provide a vital pathway to achieving net zero emissions by contributing to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.

GoodFuels, Renewable Energy Group ink long-term agreement. GoodFuels and Renewable Energy Group have entered a long-term agreement for the supply and development of sustainable marine biofuel solutions for the global shipping industry.. For REG, the agreement is a clear signal of the company’s mission to enable a cleaner world and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. REG biofuels are making a real impact in the market today by offering solutions for many transportation sectors, including marine.

The United Kingdom’s Department for Transport awards Nova Pangaea Technologies, LanzaJet and British Airways grant funding to help develop sustainable aviation fuel to decarbonise the aviation industry. The Department for Transport has awarded Project Speedbird, a partnership between Nova Pangaea Technologies, British Airways, and LanzaJet, £484,000 to fund a feasibility for the development of sustainable aviation fuel in the UK.  The funding was awarded as part of the UK Department of Transport’s Green Fuels, Green Skies competition to develop sustainable aviation fuel, announced earlier this year.   Starting in 2025, Project Speedbird will begin to recycle carbon from UK wood waste into 113 million litres of SAF and renewable diesel (RD) per year, to meet the current SAF supply-demand gap in the UK.  The fuel produced is projected to power 2,000 British Airways’ flights from London to New York operated on the airline’s A350 aircraft.

 

Petron Scientech, SBI Bioenergy ink partnership for Biomass to Green Hydrogen and Low Carbon Biofuels. Petron Scientech and SBI Bioenergy announced an alliance agreement to license differentiated, integrated, energy-efficient, and sustainable technologies for Biomass to Green Hydrogen and Low Carbon Biofuels production.  Under this agreement, the Alliance shall utilize Petron’s proprietary & energy efficient, Cellulosic Ethanol (G2.0E) technology from a variety of locally available agriculture/forestry residuals (wastes) and woody biomass, integrated with production of Green Hydrogen using SBI’s proprietary, energy efficient technology, Gölu-H2, for commercial production of low-carbon, high purity Hydrogen to decarbonize transportation, electricity generation, industrial/residential heating, and industrial Hydrogen applications. This Hydrogen is suitable for fueling Fuel Cell Electric Vehicles including buses, trucks, and trains, decentralizing power generation using fuel cells, commercial power generation by blending with Natural Gas (NG), production of Renewable Low Carbon Sustainable Fuel (LCSF), and for production of Green Ammonia/Urea and other valuable products. 

Novozymes launches Innova Quantum. Novozymes is launching Innova Quantum – a new yeast that breaks the limits of performance without trade-offs. The robust new yeast enables ethanol plants with longer fermentation times of more than 60 hours to realize higher ethanol yields and processing efficiencies than ever before. And, most importantly, plants can achieve this industry-leading yield without trade-offs which put their operation at risk.

 “Innova Quantum is the most advanced yeast available and sets a new industry benchmark for the highest yielding, most robust yeast to maximize producer yield and fermentation reliability,” says Rene Garza, Novozymes’ Vice President for Agricultural & Industrial Biosolutions, North America. “Our primary goal is to help our customers protect their plant while enabling the highest level of conversion – and Innova does not require this trade-off.”

 

Category: Fuels, Top Stories

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