Philipp Schoelzel, vice-president next generation biofuels, bp, outlines why he finds the complex world of biofuels a fascinating sector to work in. What was your first job? Within bp it was as a product scheduler at our Rotterdam Refinery for Light and Middle Distillates. Basically, I was managing day-to-day refinery production, imports and exports of oil products... [Read More]

Wärtsilä’s participation in a recent test using 100% biofuels to fuel a cruise ship’s engine was as much a demonstration of the power of collaboration as it was a technical milestone for the industry. We worked with GoodFuels and Holland America Line (HAL) to complete the cruise industry’s first multi-week test of biofuels. The 20-day test was conducted onboard... [Read More]

Operations manager Marko Leinonen ensures that the biofuel production at UPM Lappeenranta biorefinery runs optimally and safely. What projects are you mainly working on right now? I am responsible for production operations at the biorefinery in Finland. We are currently preparing for next spring's major shutdown in cooperation with the HSE as well as the maintenance... [Read More]

Can you outline how the past 12 months have been for Clariant Adsorbents? Guido: Last year continued to be another challenging year for the industry. In 2021, much like the year before, almost all the geographies and markets in which we operate were impacted by the global Covid-19 crisis. However, the business, last year, was more affected by the Russian invasion of... [Read More]

Although demand for sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) is expected to experience significant growth1, production is currently limited with only a handful of commercial plants available today. bp believes that producing SAF through co-processing at existing refineries will help the aviation sector as it transitions to a low-carbon industry and builds dedicated and more efficient... [Read More]

Cytiva™ produces more than 25 million syringe filters each year and these are used in a variety of settings – from tracking air pollution levels to monitoring and optimising the conversion of glucose to ethanol in the production of bioethanol. Each time a Whatman™ syringe filter is used during one of these processes, the remaining plastic waste is the size of a... [Read More]

Increasing the use of sustainable biofuels is the most effective way to reduce the carbon intensity of fuels for the transport and energy sectors in the European Union. Waste and residues from agricultural activities have the best potential to deliver zeroemissions energy as traditional sources of farm emissions from the biodegradation of farm wastes are converted into... [Read More]

Last year marked another pivotal year for the Renewable Energy Group business. Early in the year, the company acquired two fuel distribution companies based in California. The business saw great progress with their improvement and expansion project at the Geismar, Los Angeles renewable diesel biorefinery, and the lower carbon feedstock expansion project in Emden, Germany.... [Read More]

For the planet to reach net carbon neutrality by 2050 we need solutions, which are both actionable and scalable today. Despite impressive and steady gains, we unfortunately cannot solely rely on electrification to reduce all GHG emissions from transport, especially for maritime, aviation and larger road vehicles such as HGVs. During 2022 we saw a big focus on waste-based... [Read More]

New regulation on greenhouse gas emissions from shipping only increases the need for solutions that can make a difference now. 2023 heralds yet another shift in shipping’s regulatory tectonic plates. It marks the beginning of the CII era, and this year will also see the scaling and implementation of a number of regional, international and national regulations aimed... [Read More]

Tim Cesarek, chief commercial officer at Gevo outlines some of the challenges the biofuels industry faces Can you tell us a bit about Gevo and the work that you do there? Gevo’s mission is to transform renewable energy and carbon into energy-dense liquid hydrocarbons. The liquid hydrocarbons can be used for drop-in transportation fuels such as petroleum, jet fuel and... [Read More]

Can you introduce yourself as well as explain to our readers what FTC does? Houston-based Filtration Technology Corporation (FTC) has an impressive history of developing and delivering innovative filtration and separation products and solutions since 1987. FTC’s extensive line of proprietary and industrystandard products covers liquid-solids filtration, liquid-liquid... [Read More]

Sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) is at a turning point. Aviation has long been considered one of the hardest industries to decarbonise and unlike the automotive industry, we are still years away from being able to use electricity or hydrogen to solely power passenger aircraft. In the meantime, the most achievable solution is to lower the carbon content of the fuel that... [Read More]

Olivier Mace, owner of Broadmanor Consulting, looks into his crystal ball to analyse the state of the biofuels market as the industry powers ahead into the new year. There is a concept in thermodynamics called Entropy – a dimension rather hard to grasp, which is often referred to as “a measure of disorder”. The greater the entropy of a system, the greater its... [Read More]