Abengoa progresses big plans for biofuels
31 Jan 2010
Madrid – Spanish group Abengoa Bioenergy is advancing its plans to establish major biofuels production facilities in Europe and the US. These include a flagship facility in the Port of Rotterdam, with an installed capacity of 480 million liters of bioethanol, and more than 300 000 tons of DGS - a protein rich component for animal feed.
Carbon dioxide resulting from the fermentation of the sugars at the Rotterdam plant under construction in Rotterdam port will be sold in full to the greenhouse industry located on more than 10 000 hectares on the opposite side of the port. It also has a cogeneration power plant to produce the steam and power needed for the biochemical process, and any surplus energy will be sold to the Dutch grid.
Abengoa has also recently started up a 1.3 million gallon/year biomass-to-bioethanol demonstration plant has been built in Babilafuente, Salamanca. The facility is being used to help its engineers improve the design of commercial scale plants to be built over the next few years; assessing operating costs, identifying bottlenecks and optimising operation.
The plant is located inside the 53 million gallon/year bioethanol from grain facility Biocarburantes de Castilla y León in Babilafuente and, therefore, both facilities share services and process chains. Abengoa’s goal is to produce second generation biofuels through “hybrid plants”: joining first and second generation facilities that allow for new technology implementation costs to be reduced, exploiting the benefits of economy of scale.
Construction of the biomass plant was completed in December 2008 and it has been operating since September 2009 – the group claims this is the first facility in the world to operate with this technology at this scale and that it has the only technology sufficiently advanced enough to be implemented on a commercial scale over the next few years.
At present the Babilafuente plant is operating continuously using wheat straw feedstock, Abengoa has reported. Some 42% of the bioethanol it produces is distilled, and subsequently concentrated and dehydrated, and the plant has now been operating for more than 2000 hours, a company statement noted.
In the US, meanwhile, Abengoa is promoting another facility to be built in Hugoton, Kansas. It will produce 16 million gallons/year of bioethanol from lignocellulosic biomass and will be part financed by the United States Department of Energy. The demonstration plant in Babilafuente plays an important role in achieving a technological status which allows for the successful development of the Hugoton project.
Abengoa Bioenergy built a pilot plant in York, Nebraska, US, capable of producing 80,000 liters/year of bioethanol, which has been operating since the end of 2007.
