Honeywell starts building biofuels demo unit in Hawaii

Honeywell UOP, a key player in the development of process technology for the refining, petrochemical and natural gas industries, has broken ground on a biofuels demonstration unit in Hawaii, US.

The biorefinery will handle cellulosic biomass, forest residuals and algae to produce biofuels for the transportation industry, upgrading biomass into renewable petrol, diesel and jet fuel.

The project has been awarded $25 million (€17.5 million) from the US Department of Energy (DoE) and will help the DoE achieve its goal of reducing the nation's dependence on imported oil. It will also support the Hawaii Clean Energy initiative goal to achieve 70% clean energy by 2030.

'Biomass is abundantly available today and it is an important opportunity to consider as we seek alternatives that will reduce our dependence on fossil fuels and improve our environmental footprint,' says Jim Rekoske, vice president and general manager of Renewable Energy and Chemicals for Honeywell's UOP.

The plant is being built at the existing Tesoro refinery in Kapolei, where it will demonstrate viability of the technology, test the fuels produced and evaluate the environmental footprint of the fuels and the process technology.

'Our island home is far too dependent on important fossil fuels and I am very pleased that this alternative energy initiative has the support of the federal government. Hawaii will play a critical role in helping the domestic biofuel industry thrive and this project will create much needed jobs in Kapolei,' comments Senator Daniel Inouye.

Initial production at the refinery will begin next year before it starts full operations in 2014.

Following the successful demonstration of the technology, it could be scaled up in a 50 million gallon a year commercial-scale refinery, producing drop-in green transportation fuels, and 800 construction jobs and 1,000 new jobs in biomass production and refinery operations.