ECO-FORCE FUELS
Eco-efficient biorefinery for competitive production of green renewable shipping fuels
Project team: Paul Christakopoulos (project leader), Antonopoulou Io, Irene Delgado Vellosillo, Eleni Krikigianni, Leonidas Matsakas, Alok Kumar Patel, Petter Paulsen Thoresen, Ulrika Rova
Partners: BASF SE; Lunds universitet; RISE Research Institutes of Sweden; RISE Processum; Scandinaos; Hulteberg Chemistry & Engineering
Duration: 2023-2025
Funded by the Swedish Energy Agency
ECO-FORCE FUELS aims to produce low-emission marine biofuels via complete conversion of forest residues. A continuous organosolv process is used to separate cellulose and hemicellulose from lignin. Microbial lipids are produced from cellulose and hemicellulose hydrolysates; whereas hydrothermal liquefaction of lignin will yield bio-oil that can be easily fractionated into light and heavy oil. While the light fraction has previously been successfully upgraded to oxygen-free aromatics for use as aviation fuel, ECO-FORCE FUELS will upgrade the heavy oil fraction and bio-lipids to bunker fuel and the light fraction to chemicals. The resulting sulfur-free marine bio-crude will comply with existing fuel standards and strict emission regulations, as well as with improved fuel efficiency requirements of future vessels. Combining the mixture of lipids and heavy bio-oil with conventional petroleum-derived oil will result in affordable and renewable marine fuel.
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