Neste Oil has announced plans to build a new biomass-to-liquid diesel plant in Rotterdam in the Netherlands. The plant will produce what the company calls NExBTL renewable diesel fuel at the rate of 800,000 tonnes per year after it begins operating in 2011. Neste will spend about €670 million (a little over $1 billion at current exchange rates) on the facility which will use Neste's processes to convert a mix of palm and rapeseed oils and animal fat into a high-quality diesel fuel. Neste already has a smaller plant in Finland using this process with another one the same size as the Dutch plant that was announced for Singapore last fall. The NExBTL fule is claimed to reduce total life cycle CO₂ emissions by 40-60 percent compared to petroleum diesel. Neste also has a variety of ongoing research projects to use non-food vegetable oils, wood waste and algae for diesel fuel production.

[Source: Neste Oil]

Finnish oil company Neste has started preparing to build what they are claiming will be the biggest biodiesel production facility in the world in Singapore. The company has invested about 550 million EUR (about $800 million US) in a plant that will be able to produce about 800,000 tons of biodiesel per year. Construction is expected to start in early 2008 and be completed by the end of 2010.

Despite some concern from environmental groups and research institutes, Neste is going to produce biodiesel from palm oil. They chose Singapore as site for such a big facility is because it has the world third-largest oil refining complex. It's also very close to palm oil-producing countries. Neste already has a biodiesel factory in Porvoo (Finland) that produces about 170,000 tons of biodiesel per year.

Neste states that this facility is going to use the company's new NExBTL, claimed to be a "second generation biodiesel manufacturing process." The process can use any kind of fatty acids as a raw material. Neste also said that NExBTL has a higher quality than standard oil diesel and has about 40 to 60 percent less global CO₂ impact.

Related:

• Neste will test biodiesel in Sweden
• Neste's new NExBTL solves many biodiesel issues

[Source: Agencia EFE via Econoticias]

Finnish oil refiner and marketer Neste Oil Corporation announced it has developed a biodiesel manufacturing process whose output solves many of biodiesel's traditional problems. Called "next generation biomass to liquid" or NExBTL, the resulting biodiesel can not only be made from animal fat or vegetable matter, but is more consistent in quality compared to current biodiesel manufactured in the EU, It is also more cold temperature and cold tolerant and has negligible exhaust emissions. The company is currently working with domestic automakers to test the new biodiesel for production over the next few years.

[Source: engineer live]