Southern Oil Refining to build a pilot-scale biorefinery in Queensland

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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”.

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