Paving the way for emissions-free renewable fuels

UOP, LLC, a Honeywell company (Des Plaines, Ill.; www.uop.com) and Wood plc (Aberdeen, Scotland; www.woodplc.com) are now licensing a combined technology suite that brings together UOP’s Ecofining renewable-fuels process with Wood’s Terrace Wall hydrogen-reforming furnace, with the aim of substantially reducing greenhouse-gas emissions in the production of sustainable fuels. The main synergy between the technologies comes from the efficient utilization of Ecofning’s byproducts.

“We’re taking some of the secondary products from the Ecofining technology, which are primarily renewable naphtha and renewable liquefied petroleum gasoline (LPG), and instead of using those byproducts as fuel blendstocks, we’re sending them to Wood’s hydrogen unit as fuel to be converted into a purified, renewable-hydrogen feedstream that is recycled back as feed to the Ecofining unit,” explains Dan Szeezil, renewable fuel leader at Honeywell. Because the hydrogen that is being used for the Ecofining renewable diesel process is actually produced from the same renewable feed — such as used cooking oil or animal fats — that is used to produce renewable-diesel and jet fuel, the carbon intensity of the process is significantly reduced, adds Szeezil. “Furthermore, as part of this overall combined suite, UOP offers CCS [carbon capture and storage] technology for the CO₂ emissions that come from the hydrogen unit,” says Szeezil.

The first commercial demonstration of this integrated process will take place at ECB Group’s renewable-fuels project in Villeta, Paraguay, which is slated to produce up to 20,000 barrels per day (bbl/d) of renewable diesel and jet fuel.