Refinery supplier UOP intros green diesel

Venerable petroleum refinery supplier UOP, formed in 1914, today announced its first renewable fuel process, and a commercial biofuel facility based on the new technology.

UOP and massive European refiner Eni S.p.A. (NYSE: ENI) announced today that Eni will build a production facility using the company's new refining process, branded Ecofining™, and will produce high performance premium green diesel fuel—and not conventional biodiesel—from various vegetable oils.

The facility, to be located in Livorno, Italy, will process an initially modest amount of oil, up to 6,500 barrels per day, to produce a high-cetane value diesel fuel.

The refinery's nameplate yield is being kept confidential by the two companies for now.

It is to be the first facility to use the Ecofining technology, and is expected to come online in 2009.

UOP's Ecofining process uses a catalytic hydroprocessing process to convert vegetable oils like soy, rapeseed, palm oils and others to a green diesel fuel. The product, a direct substitute for diesel fuel, features a cetane value (the measure of the combustion quality of diesel) of approximately 80, the company claims.

Diesel found at pumps today ranges from 40 to 60 cetane. So the new fuel gives refiners ways to enhance existing diesel fuels and "expand the diesel pool," UOP says.

Jennifer Holmgren, director of UOP’s Renewable Energy & Chemicals business unit, explained to the Cleantech Group that UOP's process adds hydrogen to the vegetable oil, rather than the methanol used in conventional biodiesel processes.

In doing so, it removes the oxygen normally found in biodiesel, leaving only isoparaffins and paraffins, which are "indistinguishable from the molecules in conventional petroleum diesel," she said.

Advantages of its process, according to Holmgren, include full compatibility for the fuel with today's distribution infrastructure and engines, as well as accurate control over the fuel's cloud point, regardless of feedstock.

"In biodiesel, the cloud points and cold flow properties are very much dependent on the specific vegetable oil you buy. If it's palm, you get a different cloud point. This is important, as running a bus in Minnesota in the winter is different than running it in the summer in Florida."

Even though the hydrogen it uses in its process is usually derived from the same fossil fuels as methanol used in biodiesel, UOP claims its process can be more environmentally sound.

"Yes, both methanol for biodiesel and hydrogen start life as natural gas. In biodiesel, the side product you get is glycerol. However, our side product is propane, and you can get hydrogen from propane. Technically, if you do it that way, 100 percent of your product can come from renewables," she said.

"Most people we're talking to are going to buy the hydrogen from a pipeline or make it themselves from natural gas. But our vision is that of a completely closed loop."

Closed loop refining itself is not a novel concept; others are pursuing ethanol and biodiesel operations using methane from landfills, or even cow manure (for instance, read about initiatives underway by E3 BioFuels and Panda Ethanol.)

While its initial facility with Eni in Italy will be modestly sized, Holmgren claims UOP's process is limited only by the supply of oil.

"If we had enough feedstock, this process would scale to any size you wanted. It gets cheaper as you scale it up; we have huge economies of scale. We could easily build 20, 40, 60-thousand barrel a day units. This would scale up to that. That's what we'd normally do."

In terms of the cost of the process, UOP—which is in the business of licensing its technology and selling catalysts, and not building plants per se—estimates it will be equivalent to the capital expense associated with the equipment needed to make biodiesel.

UOP is headquartered in Des Plaines, Illinois. The company is a leading supplier and licensor of process technology, catalysts, adsorbents, process plants and consulting services to the petroleum refining, petrochemical, and gas processing industries, and is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Honeywell International (NYSE: HON).

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