Next step towards the Leuna isob­uten-pilot plant

As part of the agree­ment, until Septem­ber 2016 up to 13 oper­at­ors of the Fraunhofer CBP will work on the up-scal­ing of Glob­al Bioen­er­gies’ pro­cess to con­vert renew­able resources into isob­utene, one of the key build­ing blocks of the pet­ro­chem­ic­al industry. As pre­vi­ously announced (more…), the pro­ject is sup­por­ted by a EUR 5.7 mil­lion­grant from the Ger­man Fed­er­al Min­istry of Edu­ca­tion and Research (BMBF). Designed for a pro­duc­tion capa­city of up to 100 tons per year, the indus­tri­al pilot plant in Leuna will com­bine two 5,000 liter fer­menters and a com­plete puri­fic­a­tion sys­tem, mim­ick­ing all aspects of a com­mer­cial scale plant. It will lead to high-pur­ity isob­utene, usable for the man­u­fac­tur­ing of plastics and elast­omers as well as drop-in bio­fuels such as isooctane. This scale will enable the deliv­ery of samples to indus­tri­al­ists, includ­ing Audi as part of the part­ner­ship signed with Glob­al Bioen­er­gies in Janu­ary 2014. ​“Sign­ing this con­tract is anoth­er import­ant step in trans­ition­ing the isob­utene pro­cess from a break­through sci­entif­ic innov­a­tion into a high-value indus­tri­al asset. The team is now com­plete: in addi­tion to Linde (IBB net­work mem­ber), in charge of the engin­eer­ing, Fraunhofer CBP rep­res­ents a first class part­ner for the com­mis­sion­ing and the oper­a­tion of this pilot plant.” said Thomas Buhl, Head of Busi­ness Devel­op­ment at Glob­al Bioen­er­gies. Com­ment­ing on the agree­ment, Gerd Unkel­bach, Head of the Fraunhofer CBP, added: ​“We highly appre­ci­ate to be part of the devel­op­ment of this sus­tain­able pro­cess. The pro­ject fits very well in the infra­struc­ture and the research focus of the CBP. With­in our cooper­a­tion we sup­port Glob­al Bioen­er­gies with know-how on scale-up of bio­tech­no­lo­gic­al and chem­ic­al pro­cesses.” In June 2013, Glob­al Bioen­er­gies had already announced that its first indus­tri­al pilot will be part of the Pomacle-Bazan­court plat­form, the largest agri-busi­ness site in Europe loc­ated close to Reims, gath­er­ing major indus­tri­al­ists such as Cristal Uni­on. This first pilot, to be run in col­lab­or­a­tion with Arkema and the French Nation­al Centre for Sci­entif­ic Research (CNRS), is expec­ted to start its oper­a­tion in autumn this year. It will set the basis for large scale exploit­a­tion of the isob­utene pro­cess in its applic­a­tion to pro­duce methac­ryl­ic deriv­at­ives that can be used for paints and organ­ic glass. Source: Glob­al Bioenergies