Southern Oil Refining to build a pilot-scale biorefinery in Queensland
Southern Oil
Refining is an Australian company based in Wagga Wagga (New South Wales) which
“re-refines” waste lube oil for reuse as lube oil (cradle-to-cradle solution). It
has the capacity to recycle 38% of Australia’s annual used lube oil production
through its Wagga Wagga plant and the Northern Oil Refinery in Gladstone (Queensland).
The product has a significantly smaller carbon footprint than petroleum-based
oils.
In a recent press
release, Southern Oil Refining has announced that will build an AUD16 million
(€10.7 million) advanced biofuel pilot plant at Gladstone co-located with the aforementioned
“re-refining” facility. The plant will be fed with sugarcane bagasse and
possibly prickly acacia for producing crude bio-oil which will then be upgraded
to kerosene and diesel products. The pilot plant is expected to be operational
by later this year and will aim to produce one million litres of fuel within
three years for use in field trials by the US navy (as part of its Great Green Fleet
initiative) and also by the Australian Navy. There are eventual plans to expand
the pilot-scale facility into a large commercial-scale biorefinery costing AUD150
million and producing 200 million litres of advanced biofuels annually.
The company was assessing whether locate the
facility at the Wagga Wagga plant or at the Gladstone one. The decision was
made easier with the announcement of the BioFutures
Roadmap of the Queensland Government. In order to support the development
and growth of a competitive biofuels and industrial biotechnology sector in
Queensland, the government developed a Queensland Biofutures 10-Year Roadmap
consultation paper. Public consultation is now closed and “The Biofutures
10-Year Roadmap Action Plan” is expected to be completed by mid-2016. The
Queensland Government is committed to stimulating an industrial biotechnology
revolution in the state. According to the words of Queensland Premier
Annastacia Palaszczuk: “A fully-fledged biofuels industry has the potential to
play a key role in our economic future, and this pilot plant is a giant step
towards achieving that goal”.