St1 and Ubon Bio Ethanol to launch a pilot project to produce ethanol from cassava waste in Thailand
St1 continues
to move forward. Last year, the blog reported on its plans for building new
cellulosic ethanol plants in Europe (see “St1
is planning to construct a new Cellunolix® ethanol plant in Norway” and “St1
announces its plans for a new cellulosic ethanol project in Pietarsaari and the
expansion of the Kaajani plant”). And now, it goes out of the European continent
towards Asia guided by Ubon Bio Ethanol,
the largest cassava ethanol producer in Thailand. On 24th January, both
companies signed a Memorandum of Understanding to launch a pilot project to
produce bioethanol from cassava waste (see press
release).
Figure 1. St1 and Ubon Bio Ethanol teams after
the signing of the Memorandum (extracted from Ubon Bio Ethanol web page)
St1 has performed studies of different types of
food industry waste for bioethanol production in its R&D laboratories and
discovered that waste from cassava starch production in Thailand is one of the
best feedstock sources for its Etanolix® technology. Etanolix® plants refine
waste and residues which are rich in starch and sugar into 99,8% bioethanol. Cassava
waste is a challenging feedstock due to its fibrous consistency, which makes
starch extraction difficult. However, St1 experience in producing ethanol from
sawdust helped it to address the challenges involved in the processing of
fibrous feedstock materials.
Ubon Bio Ethanol Company Limited has a starch
and ethanol plant in the same location in Ubon Ratchathani (Thailand). This
convenient arrangement will make the pilot project easy to manage and will
simplify full-scale production logistics. Moreover, it will allow to ensure a
smooth start to production and to assess the effects of local conditions and
seasonal changes on the scale and design of the ethanol plant. Design engineers
are currently working on the pilot equipment and the launch is scheduled for
this year.
The amount of cassava waste generated by
Thailand’s largest starch production plants would enable the construction of
units producing 10-30 million litres of ethanol per year. To produce ethanol
from cassava waste will serve to improve economically margin of starch
producers and solve the environmental issue related to this by-product. Patrick
Pitkänen (Head of Business Development and Sales at St1) said: “Our goal is to
build as many as 20 Etanolix® plants in Thailand, with a combined production
capacity of 400 million litres of ethanol per year”. According to the press
release, Thailand uses over 3 million litres of ethanol per day as transport
fuel and the Government plans to raise consumption to 11.3 million litres per
day by 2036.