October 30, 2007 - "Axens Receives 2007 Chemical Engineering Award for Biodiesel Technology"
Axens (Rueil-Malmaison, France) has been attributed the prestigious “2007 Kirkpatrick Award for Chemical Engineering Achievement”, by the US Magazine Chemical Engineering, for its biodiesel production process, Esterfip-H™. The Award ceremony took place in the Rockefeller Center in New York City on October 29, 2007.
The Award is presented every two years to the company that has commercially demonstrated, in the preceding two years, “innovation that represents broad-reaching improvements in both process technology and new product development and is judged on both the merits of the development itself and on the difficulty of the chemical engineering problems that were encountered and overcome along the way”. The winner is selected by a Board of Judges selected from the heads of accredited chemical engineering departments at U.S. and European universities. This is the 39th Kirkpatrick Award presented by Chemical Engineering.
In 2003, Axens received an Honor Award for being one of the four finalists not selected for the Award. At that time, the Prime-G+ process for FCC gasoline desulfurization was a nominee. Prime-G+ has since become the worldwide benchmark and market leader for environmental applications in gasoline sulfur quality improvement; the process has been licensed to process over 3.3 million barrels per day of gasoline.
Esterfip-H is an innovative heterogeneous catalyzed technology for the production of biodiesel (fatty acid methyl esters). This advancement ensures not only the production of high quality biodiesel but also directly produces glycerin of unequalled 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 additional Esterfip-H plants are at various project stages around the world for a cumulative production capacity of 1.3 million tons per year of biodiesel from various vegetable oil feedstocks. Axens pioneered the field of biodiesel with the conventional Esterfip process commercialized in the early 1990's.
Axens accepts this new Award as recognition of our increasing environmental commitment to conventional and alternative clean fuels technologies: Prime-G+ for ultra clean gasoline and Esterfip-H for eco-friendly biodiesel. We are greatly honored by Chemical Engineering and will do our best to continue to merit the Award bestowed upon us.
