Neste Oil begins production at Singapore plant

December 3, 2010

BY Erin Krueger

Neste Oil has announced the start-up of its new renewable diesel plant in Singapore. Production at the facility will be ramped up on a phased basis. According to Neste Oil, the 800,000 ton-per-year (240 MMgy) plant was completed on-schedule and on-budget.

"We are very proud of the new plant and the NExBTL technology behind it, which is based on our in-house R&D," said Neste Oil President and CEO Matti Lievonen. "NExBTL represents a major Finnish innovation in the field of renewable fuels and we believe that it has excellent potential in the global marketplace."

A similar-sized NExBTL plant, which is under construction in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, is expected to be commissioned in the first half of 2011. In addition, Neste Oil already operates two smaller renewable diesel plants in Finland.

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According to Jarmo Honkamaa, Neste Oil’s deputy CEO and executive vice president, all the plants are able to use a wide variety of renewable raw materials to produce NExBTL diesel. "Currently Neste Oil uses palm oil, rapeseed oil and waste animal fat sourced from food industry to produce its NExBTL diesel," he said. "In the first stage, Singapore refinery uses palm oil and its side products such as stearin as well as animal fats as feedstock, but the variety of feedstock used in NExBTL production at our refineries is not set-instead it may change over time. Neste Oil aims to expand the raw material based and significantly invests in research for developing renewable raw materials and their refining technologies. The three main research areas currently are algae oil, microbial oil, and fuel production from wood biomass through biomass-to-liquid technology."

Neste Oil’s NExBTL production process involves hydrotreating vegetable oils and animal fat, Honkamaa said. "The process differs from production of traditional biodiesel through esterification, which has a significant impact on the quality of the product," said Honkamaa. "The greenhouse gas emission of NExBTL renewable diesel, as calculated over the fuel’s entire life cycle, are 40 to 80 percent lower than those of fossil diesel. NExBLT renewable diesel has been in use on the road for a number of years, and extensive tests have shown that it can be used at up to 100 percent content in cars, trucks and buses without any problems."

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