Elevance and partners complete the scaling up of a biorefining technology
According to a recent press
release, Elevance Renewable Sciences
has successfully completed the scaling-up of a biorefining technology together
with its partners Versalis,
XiMo AG and Soneas.
The technology: ethenolysis
The technology concerned is
the olefin methatesis utilizing ethylene and natural oil feedstocks. In olefin
metathesis, the carbons attached with a double bond change places with other
alkene carbons, enabling new chemical compounds and manufacturing processes
previously impossible. Traditionally, metathesis had only been used with
hydricarbons and nickel catalysts under high pressure and high temperatures.
The development of new homogeneous catalysts (Schrock and Grubbs) allowed to
accommodate the complexity of plant oils as feedstocks to make new materials at
industrial scale with low temperatures and pressures.
General ethenolysis equation: A=B + CH2=CH2 → A=CH2
+ B=CH2
Application using renewable
feedstocks: CH3(CH2)7CH=CH(CH2)7CO2Me
+ CH2=CH2 → CH3(CH2)7CH=CH2
+ MeO2C(CH2)7CH=CH2 (methyl oleate
derived from natural seed oils to 1-decene and methyl-9-decenoate)
The scaling-up trials
Catalysts produced by XiMo
were used at Soneas' manufacturing facility in Budapest. The run represented a
scale up of 40,000 times what had been previously demonstrated in the
laboratory and the largest ever usage of "Schrock" catalysts for
metathesis with ethylene and a renewable oil.
Figure 1. Lab for the synthesis of
the metathesis catalyst in Soneas facilities (extracted from Soneas web page)
The partnership
XiMo and Elevance began
working together in January 2011, carrying out successful demonstrations to
make catalyzed metathesis of natural oil esters commercially competitive. Versalis
and Elevance signed a Memorandum of Understanding to establish a strategic
partnership to jointly develop and scale this new metathesis technology to
produce biochemicals from vegetable oils in February 2014. The current scaling-up
tests were partially funded by this partnership. Versalis and Elevance have
also been collaborating for the implementation at the Versalis Porto Marghera
site of a biorefinery based on Elevance proprietary technology of natural oils’
metathesis with 1-butene. On the other hand, Soneas entered into a strategic
partnership with XiMo to produce metathesis catalysts and set-up a dedicated process development
laboratory to be able to meet the special conditions used during the synthesis
of the catalyst. Besides, it provided pilot scale manufacturing facilities to
carry out the scaling-up of the ethenolysis technology.