Honeywell company UOP’s green fuels process technology has been selected by Petrixo Oil & Gas to produce renewable jet fuel and renewable diesel at a new refinery to be built in Fujairah, UAE
Petrixo Oil & Gas said that it will use UOP renewable jet fuel process technology to process approximately 1.4mn cu m per year of renewable feedstocks into renewable jet fuel and renewable diesel, also known as Honeywell Green Jet Fuel and Honeywell Green Diesel. The process technology is capable of processing a variety of renewable feedstocks.
The UAE-based firm had announced earlier this year that it will invest US$800mn to build the new refinery, which will have a design capacity of one 2.8mn cu m per year of biofuel products, and will be the first commercial-scale renewable jet fuel production facility outside of US.
The new Fujairah refinery will occupy 460,000 sq m in the Fujairah Free Zone and Port of Fujairah.
Eid Al Olayyan, CEO of Petrixo Oil & Gas, said, “Petrixo Oil & Gas believes that new energy solutions are immensely important for scalable, environmental and renewable solutions. “UOP’s green fuels technologies are proven refining solutions that produce high-quality products compatible with petroleum-based fuels.”
According to UOP, the technology is designed to provide flexibility to adjust the feedstock mix depending on parameters such as cost and availability. The technology also enables the adoption of newer-generation feedstocks, such as oils derived from algae and halophytes, as scalable supply chains for these lipids develop.
Veronica May, vice-president of UOP’s renewable energy and chemicals business unit, said,“UOP’s renewable process technologies produce real fuels, rather than fuel additives such as biodiesel, that fit seamlessly into existing fuel supply chains. The renewable fuels produced by our technology also offer lower greenhouse gas emissions relative to traditional petroleum-based fuels.”
Honeywell’s UOP renewable jet fuel process technology was developed in 2007 under a contract from the US defense advanced research projects agency (DARPA) to produce renewable military jet fuel for the US military. The process technology is fully compatible with existing hydroprocessing technology commonly used in refineries today to produce transportation fuels, the firm said.
The process technology also produces Honeywell Green Diesel, a drop-in replacement for traditional diesel. The fuel offers improved performance over biodiesel and petroleum-based diesel, including a higher cetane value compared with the cetane range of 40 to 60 found in diesel at pumps currently.
