SOURCE: Varennes Carbon Recycling
March 28, 2023
BY Erin Krueger
The Canadian Infrastructure Bank on March 27 announced it will provide a $277 million loan to a joint-venture partnership between Shell, Suncor, Proman and the government of Quebec that will enable construction of a large-scale biorefinery based on Enerkem technology.
The $1.2 billion facility, known as Varennes Carbon Recycling, will include an electrolyzer that will supply clean hydrogen and oxygen to convert more than 200,000 metric tons of non-recyclable waste and residual biomass into biofuel using Enerkem’s proprietary thermochemical waste-to-methanol process. The facility will have the capacity to produce up to 130 million liters (34.34 million gallons) of biofuel annually.
Development of the VCR project was initially announced by Enerkem and its partners in late 2020. Construction on the project kicked off in 2021. Commercial operations are currently expected to begin in 2025.
Earlier this month, Accelera by Cummins, a business segment of Cummins Inc., announced it has been selected by VCR to supply a 90-megawatt (MW) proton exchange membrane (PEM) electrolyzer system for the facility. The electrolyzer system will be comprised of four HyLYZER-5000s—Accelera’s largest electrolyzer product. According to Cummins, each HyLYZER-5000 utilizes 25 MW of electricity and can produce up to 10 tons of hydrogen per day.
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The electrolyzer system splits water into hydrogen and oxygen. The VCR plan will use renewable hydrogen and oxygen produced by the electrolyzers to recycle carbon and hydrogen from waste materials.
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The U.S. Department of Energy Bioenergy Technologies Office (BETO) announced up to $23 million in funding to support research and development (R&D) of domestic chemicals and fuels from biomass and waste resources.
The U.S. DOE has announced its intent to issue funding to support high-impact research and development (R&D) projects in two priority areas: sustainable propane and renewable chemicals and algal system cultivation and preprocessing.
Sens. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, and Pete Ricketts, R-Neb., in August introduced the Renewable Chemicals Act, a bill that aims to create a tax credit to support the production of biobased chemicals.
The Chemical Catalysis for Bioenergy Consortium, a consortium of the U.S. DOE’s Bioenergy Technologies Office, has launched an effort that aims to gather community input on the development of new biomass processing facilities.
USDA on March 8 celebrated the second annual National Biobased Products Day, a celebration to raise public awareness of biobased products, their benefits and their contributions to the U.S. economy and rural communities.