Elevance and partners complete the scaling up of a biorefining technology

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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.

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