DONG Energy and Neste Oil have entered into a collaboration to develop a cost-effective technology for producing renewable diesel and aviation fuel from agricultural residues.

Neste Oil, the world’s largest producer of premium-quality renewable fuels, has joined forces with DONG Energy, one of the leading energy groups in Northern Europe, to develop an integrated process to produce renewable diesel and aviation fuel based on agricultural residues.

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“We are continuously developing our Inbicon technology in order to expand the use of agricultural residues. We are now able to produce high-quality cellulosic sugars that can be used in various applications, and we see Neste Oil as the obvious partner when developing a technology where we use these cellulosic sugars for renewable fuel production,” says Henrik Maimann, Vice President at DONG Energy.

“Neste Oil is currently the world’s only biofuel producer capable of producing premium-quality renewable fuel on an industrial scale from more than 10 different feedstocks. Increasing the use of waste- and residue-based feedstocks is one of our most important goals, and microbial oil produced from forest industry and agricultural residues, such as straw, is one of our potential future feedstocks,” says Lars Peter Lindfors, Neste Oil’s Senior Vice President, Technology.

“Our cooperation with DONG Energy is a continuation of Neste Oil’s ongoing microbial oil research, and joint technology development will support our efforts aimed at developing technology capable of producing microbial oil on an industrial scale.”

DONG Energy’s Inbicon technology will be used in the first part of the process to pre-treat biomass and produce cellulosic sugars that can be converted into microbial oil with Neste Oil’s technology. Microbial oil can be used as a feedstock for premium-quality renewable fuels such as renewable diesel and renewable aviation fuel.

Joint technology development
Neste Oil and Dong Energy have already passed the laboratory and pilot phase, and the technologies must now be optimized and verified on a larger scale. DONG Energy will use Inbicon’s demonstration facility in Kalundborg, Denmark to optimize the yield and performance of the biomass pre-treatment to perfectly match Neste Oil’s microbial oil process. Neste Oil has been running a microbial oil pilot plant in Porvoo, Finland since 2012.

“With this collaboration we have a partner for the further development of our technology, and at the same time Neste Oil is able to develop their own technology by using our product,” says Henrik Maimann.

“DONG Energy’s technology is promising and we believe that joint technology development is the best way to find a cost-effective solution for producing renewable fuels from agricultural residues,” says Lars Peter Lindfors.

Both parties will receive funding from the ERA-Net Plus BESTF program in connection with the collaboration.

Source: DONG Energy