Global Bioenergies demo plant in Leuna operates successfully its entire process

The demonstration plant of Global Bioenergies, located in Leuna, has successfully operated its entire technical process: fermentation, purification and filling station (see press release). The facility is devoted to the production of isobutene from renewable raw materials. As is well known, this molecule is used as an intermediate in the manufacturing of a variety of products: fuels and fuels additives (it reacts with methanol and ethanol to generate MTBE and ETBE, respectively; its alkylation with butane produces isooctane), polymers (butyl rubber), paints, cosmetics and so on.

Project datasheet:

Location	Facility owned by the Fraunhofer CBP at the Leuna refinery platform. The Fraunhofer team is in charge of operating the facility in the most effective way possible.
Feedstock	1G sugars: beets and cane, glucose syrup from cereals. 2G sugars: wheat straw, bagasse, wood chips…
Product and production capacity	100 ton/year of isobutene.
Investment	11 M€.

Figure 1. Fermentation unit of the Leuna demo plant (extracted from the web page of Global Bionergies)

Timeline:

Mid-2015	Start of the construction.
End of 2016	Completion of the construction (see press release).
First months of 2017	Gradual start-up of the unit.
April 2017	The fermentation unit was the first section started-up. Fermentation performances previously obtained on the pilot plant located at Pomacle-Bazancourt were replicated and even exceeded (see press release).
August 2017	Site maintenance.
September 2017	Restarting of the plant. Initial test involving the full technical process. First bottle was filled.

The words of Marc Delcourt, CEO of Global Bioenergies, summarize well the next steps: “With this achieved, Global Bioenergies is now looking to the future. This means gradually approaching the process’ commercial performances, prior to building IBN-One, the first commercial plant project that we have with Cristal Union, the second largest French sugar producer. In a strongly improving macro-economic context (price of sugar sharply down; price of oil sharply up; energy transition now at the heart of global concerns, etc.), our ambition is to establish a large number of plant projects in various geographic areas.”

More information of IBN-One can be found in these posts: IBN-One – A Joint Venture to build a bio-isobutene plant and IBN-One awards FEED for the first bio-isobutene biorefinery to Technip and IPSB.