BP and Johnson Matthey license its Fischer-Tropsch technology to Fulcrum BioEnergy

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Type of post: NEWS IN BRIEF.

Fulcrum BioEnergy is building a waste-to-fuels plant in the Tahoe-Reno Industrial Center (Nevada, USA). The plant was initially scheduled to start operations in 2017. However, the company broke ground on the Sierra BioFuels Plant (Sierra) last May and the new expected data for the start-up is the first quarter of 2020. Sierra will convert approximately 175,000 tons of household garbage into more than 10.5 million gallons of fuel each year.
Related posts:
- “Recent biorefinery contracts to produce biofuels from MSW in the USA”, 12/7/2015.
- “Abengoa to start the construction of a biorefinery producing biofuels from MSW in Nevada”, 9/11/2017.

The plant will be based on gasification and Fischer-Tropsch (FT) processes to produce jet fuel. It was already known that Fulcrum had licensed the gasification system from ThermoChem Recovery International. Now, BP and Johnson Matthey (JM) have signed an agreement with Fulcrum to license their FT technology.
Press releases:
- “BP and Johnson Matthey license innovative waste-to-fuels technology to biofuels producer Fulcrum BioEnergy”, 25/9/2018.
- “JM and BP license waste-to-fuels technology to Fulcrum BioEnergy”, 25/9/2018.

Figure 1. Fulcrum President and CEO (Jim Macias) and BP Vice President – Technology, Commercialization and Ventures (David Gilmour) observing operations at the Sierra BioFuels Feedstock Processing Facility (extracted from Fulcrum website)

BP and JM have developed a simple-to-operate FT technology that can work both at large and small scale to economically convert synthesis gas (generated from sources such as municipal solid waste and other biomass) into long-chain hydrocarbons suitable for the production of diesel and jet fuels. Both companies have been searching the technology for over 30 years and in 1996 joined forces to further develop it. According to the press releases, together they have created a system that delivers three times the productivity of a conventional multi-tubular fixed bed reactor and halves the capital expenditure when compared to traditional FT reactors. BP and JM won the Research Project Award and the Oil and Gas Award at the prestigious IChemE Awards in November 2017 for their work on this technology.

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