Chemical Engineering May 2021 - 12

Newsfront
Renewable Feed, New Technology
and C2C Strategies Offer
Opportunities for Refiners
After a rough past year, petroleum refineries are seeking profit opportunities through the use
of renewable feedstocks, such as vegetable oils and waste fats, as well as with new alkylation
technologies and by increasing " crude-to-chemicals " (C2C) approaches
T
he past 18 months have generally
been extraordinarily
challenging for the world's
petroleum refineries, as pandemic-related
restrictions dramatically
reduced demand for refinery products
and cut refinery utilization rates. Even
with demand for transportation fuels
returning as the world economy begins
to emerge from the pandemic,
long-term growth in gasoline and diesel
fuel demand is not expected. Flat
fuel demand growth, coupled with a
broader trend toward decarbonizing
the energy sector and increasing investment
tied to environmental, social
and governance (ESG), is driving petroleum
refiners to seek profit opportunities
through changes in the products
they make and the methods they
use to make them.
One area seeing a tremendous
amount of activity is the production
of renewable diesel fuel (see sidebar).
Driven by potentially lucrative
subsidies for
renewable fuels and
other government policies - including
the trading of RIN credits [renewable
identification numbers; the
currency of the U.S. Enviromental
Protection Agency's (EPA) Renewable
Fuel Standard (RFS) program],
the recently renewed biodiesel tax
credit, along with state-level programs,
such as Low-Carbon Fuel
Standards in California, Oregon and
British Columbia - many refiners
are looking to expand production of
renewable diesel by repurposing underutilized
refining assets. The current
incentives, coupled with new
technologies for renewable fuels, are
12
justifying revamps and new builds for
renewable diesel projects.
Renewable diesel
An example of a tool that can help
refiners take advantage of opportunities
in this area is a new, simplified
version of Honeywell UOP LLC's (Des
Plaines, Ill.; www.uop.com) " Ecofining "
process for the production of
renewable diesel fuel. UOP launched
the new version earlier this year as a
single-stage technology designed to
be a fast-to-market, low-capital-cost
technology option that can be ideal
for repurposing an underutilized hydrotreating
or hydrocracking unit.
Ben Owens, vice president and
general manager, Honeywell Sustainable
Technology Solutions, says that
over the past two years, two factors
have combined to motivate the company
toward developing the singlestage
version of Ecofining. " There's
been a lot of movement on biodiesel
as companies seek to meet sustainability
goals and pay more attention
to ESG reporting, " Owens points out,
and " there are a lot of idled assets
that refiners are trying to figure out
how to use. " Owens specifically cites
a tripling of the number of biofuelsrelated
projects in development, and
a sharp increase in refining revamps
aimed at making renewable fuels.
Those factors drove the development
of Single-Stage Ecofining,
which Owens says is 50-70% less
expensive than the original, two-stage
Ecofining, because of a simplified design,
and can reach production in 12
months, versus at least three years for
FIGURE 1. The single-stage version of the Ecofining
process for renewable diesel is designed as a
fast-to-market, low-capital-cost option
a greenfield project (Figure 1).
The single-stage Ecofining process
produces Honeywell Green Diesel fuel
from vegetable oils, used cooking oils,
and inedible corn oil. Honeywell Green
Diesel is chemically identical to petroleum-based
diesel and can be used
as a drop-in replacement in vehicles
with no modifications. Green Diesel
also features up to an 80% lifecycle reduction
in greenhouse gas emissions
compared with diesel made from petroleum,
Honeywell says.
The faster speed to market of the
single-stage unit requires a tradeoff in
feedstock flexibility, however. With its
greater feedstock flexibility, the twostage
Ecofining can make renewable
jet fuel, while the single-stage Ecofining
" is probably going to be focused
more on making diesel from underutilized
refinery assets, depending on
the refinery's unique situation relative
to feedstock logistics, " Owens says.
The new, single-stage process
uses a combination of catalysts in a
single unit to clean and remove oxygenates
and other contaminants from
the feedstock, and then isomerize the
feed to improve its cold-flow properties.
" We developed a new process
CHEMICAL ENGINEERING WWW.CHEMENGONLINE.COM MAY 2021
Honeywell UOP
http://www.uop.com http://WWW.CHEMENGONLINE.COM
Chemical Engineering May 2021

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