September 14, 2007 - "Axens selected for large Biodiesel plant in Malaysia"
Mission Biofuels Limited has awarded a turnkey construction contract to build a 250,000 metric tons per year (tpy) biodiesel plant using Axens’ Esterfip-H™ technology. The plant will be the largest of its kind. The new facility will be built at a site adjacent to the current 100,000 tpy plant in Kuantan Port, Malaysia, which is near completion.
Esterfip-H is Axens’ innovative heterogeneous catalyzed technology for the production of fatty acid methyl esters (FAME). Esterfip-H does not require caustic or mineral acid utilization. The glycerin byproduct is of high technical grade quality, above 98% purity.
The first commercial Esterfip-H unit was put on-stream in March 2006 by Diester Industrie in Sète, France. A second plant was completed in May 2007 at Perstorp's Stenungsund, Sweden chemical complex. Six more Esterfip-H plants are at various project stages around the world for a cumulative capacity of 1.3 million tpy. This value exceeds the total installed capacity of the conventional Esterfip process, which was a pioneering development of the early 1990's.
The Mission Biofuels unit is planned to run on palm oil. However it will benefit of the ability of the Esterfip-H units to operate on multiple vegetable oils.
Axens is a leading provider of clean fuels technologies. In addition to the Esterfip-H and Esterfip technologies which produce renewable diesel fuel, Axens is well known for its conventional clean fuels technologies. Prime-G+ is the leading gasoline desulfurization technology with over 150 licenses; Prime-D is a benchmark ultra low middle distillate desulfurization technology. Other technologies which produce high quality clean fuels are: DIH isomerization (one of several configurations provided to meet high octane gasoline demand), Hy-C10™ (mild hydrocracking with simultaneous diesel quality improvement), and Octanizing™ (CCR reforming to produce hydrogen and high octane gasoline from naphtha). ___________________ Esterfip, Esterfip-H, Prime-D, Prime-G, HyC-10 and Octanizing are proprietary commercial names of Axens.
Mission Biofuels Limited Mission Biofuels Limited, an ASX Listed company, is establishing a 100,000 tpy biodiesel refinery at Kuantan Port, Malaysia, with commercial production expected by October 2007. The Company’s focus will be the production of biodiesel from the abundant feedstock of crude palm oil (CPO) and the sale of biodiesel into the European market. Malaysia is the world’s largest producer of CPO. The award for the construction of a second 250,000 tpy plant has now been attributed.
