Eni opens its second HVO biorefinery in Italy
Type of post: NEWS.
Eni has opened its second HVO biorefinery in Italy. Launched in August 2019, its
reconverted plant at Gela joins to the Venice
biorefinery started in June 2014. The new facility has a processing
capacity of up to 750,000 tons/year and will be able to treat increasing
quantities of used vegetable oil, animal fat, algae and by-products to produce advanced
biofuels. The new biorefinery will allow Eni to improve in all environmental
fields, emitting more than 70% fewer emissions (SO2, NOx,
CO2 and dust) than traditional production cycles.
Press release: “Eni opens its bio-refinery in Gela”, 19/9/2019.
Figure 1. Eni head office in Rome
Converting a conventional refinery into a
biorefinery
All the petrochemical plants built in Gela
since 1962 have closed down. The process of converting the traditional refinery
into a biorefinery began in April 2016 and took more than 3 million hours of
work by Eni’s employees and third parties to finish. To create the Ecofining™
plant, the two existing desulphurisation units were modified and a steam
reforming unit was built to produce hydrogen.
In addition to the 294 M€ that has been spent
so far on reconverting the refineries, Eni plans to invest another 73 M€ for
further preliminary activities and pretreating biomass, which will be finished
by the third quarter of 2020 and will supply the biorefinery with 2G raw
material.
Besides its new biorefinery, the site is also
home to the pilot waste-to-fuel plant (Syndial
pilot plant), which has been transforming organic waste into bio-oil,
biomethane and water since last December.
Feedstock flexibility
Eni's biorefinery in Gela is designed for treating
advanced and unconventional loads up to 100% of processing capacity. Gela is
defined by its ability to process 2G raw material from waste from food
production, regenerated used cooking oil (RUCO), animal fat (tallow) and
by-products from processing vegetable oil. This makes it an innovative plant based
in the circular bioeconomy principles.