St1 completes the construction of a pilot plant to produce ethanol from cassava waste in Thailand

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Type of post: NEWS IN BRIEF.

Early last year, St1 and Ubon Bio Ethanol (the largest cassava ethanol producer in Thailand) signed a Memorandum of Understanding to launch a pilot project to produce bioethanol from cassava waste using Etanolix® technology (see blog post, 26/1/2017).

St1 has already completed the construction of the Etanolix® pilot plant at the starch and ethanol site of Ubon Bio Ethanol in Ubon Ratchathani (see press release, 3/4/2018). The facility will be operated for a year in several starch factories to test different environments, conditions and seasonal changes. The pilot phase is essential to finalize the concept for a full-scale ethanol production plant into an investment proposal. St1 has founded a subsidiary in Thailand, St1 Renewable Energy Thailand Ltd, to run the piloting and R&D of the production process.

Figure 1. Opening of the Etanolix® pilot plant at the starch and ethanol site of Ubon Bio Ethanol in Ubon Ratchathani (extracted from the Ubon Bio Ethanol website)

The aim of the project is to start the construction of the first commercial plant after the pilot phase. The amount of cassava waste generated by Thailand’s largest starch production plants would enable the construction of units producing 10-30 million liters of ethanol per year. As it was mentioned in the previous post, the final goal is to build up to 20 Etanolix® plants in Thailand, with a total production capacity of 400 million liters of ethanol per year.

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