Royal Dutch Shell and Cosan announced the companies have signed binding agreements for forming a joint venture for producing and commercializing ethanol and power from sugar cane. The companies will also indulge in distribution of a variety of industrial and transportation fuels through their distribution and retail network in Brazil. Additionally, the JV will also explore and pursue global scale production and sale of ethanol.
US based company Enviva LP, subsidiary of Intrinergy, and Electrabel, a Belgian utility and subsidiary of GDF Suez, have entered into a long-term supply agreement under which Enviva is to supply the company with 480,000 metric tons of wood pellets annually. The biomass supply will be used as a renewable fuel source for feeding Electrabel's biomass power plants in Belgium.
KL Energy Corporation and Petrobras have entered into a joint development agreement under which Petrobras is to aid KL Energy in further development and optimization of the company's cellulosic ethanol production process technology. KL Energy's previous demonstration project in Wyoming uses Ponderosa Pine feedstock, but the new and improved process will allow multiple feedstock sources at the same time, optimizing the production process.
Iberdrola is leading the VIDA project (advanced technologies in the integrated recovery of algae) with the goal of developing new micralgae-based technologies. The project has been selected by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation, as part of the Cenit program.
Solazyme announced recently the company has secured USD 52 million in Series D funding. The company's pursuing further development of technology which uses microbial fermentation to produce oil which can be used for the production of scalable biofuels, chemicals, nutritional food ingredients and health and wellness products.
Cobalt Technologies and Fluor have entered into an agreement under which Fluor is to provide Cobalt with engineering consulting services in order to help Cobalt Technologies reach commercial production of its biobutanol technology. In addition, Fuor is to provide EPCM (engineering, procurement, construction, maintenance) services to Cobalt for their demonstration and commercial scale biobutanol facilities.
Mitsubishi Corp and Mitsubishi Gas Chemical have announced the start of prodcution operations at the second methanol plant in Venezuela, at Metanol de Oriente, METOR SA. The new METOR plant will be capable of outputting 850,000 tons of methanol annually.
Construction of the plant began in 2006, and was completed in March 2010. New production capacity will increase METOR's annual production capacity from 750,000 tons to about 1.6 million tons.
Even though methanol is used primarily for the production of downstream products such as chemicals – formalin, acetic acid – it is also used as fuel, and it is expected methanol is going to be widely used in the biodiesel industry in the future, which will result in growing demand for this product. Methanol production is heavily dependent on good access to natural gas sources, which is one of the reasons Mitsubishi chose Venezuela as the location for the production plants.
[source: Mitsubishi Corporation]
Isolux Corsan has been awarded a contract from Bioenergy (Colombia), for building an industrial complex, part of which is to be a bioethanol production plant, which will be using sugar cane as the material source. The new plant will be able to process about 2.1 millino tons of cane annually. Additionally, as part of the complex, Isolux will be building a 40 MW cogeneration plant bagasse or sugar cane waste as fuel. Other facilities include milling, distillation and vinasse production using the same raw material. The new complex will be located in the Meta Department of Colombia, on former cattle ranch land. The total value of the contract is about USD 140 million.
This will be the first bioethanol project for Isolux Corsan, outside of Europe.
[source: Isolux Corsan]
PetroAlgae, owner of the micro-crop technology, has entered into a non-binding commercial offtake agreement with Eco-Frontier, a South Korean renewable energy developer, under which PetroAlgae is to license its micro-crop technology, designed to enable the licensee companies to produce cost-effective alternative to fossil fuels.
Peel Energy announced plans to develop a 20 MW biomass sourced power plant near Manchester, in Trafford. The biomass fuel would most likely come from recycled wood, agricultural and forestry residues and energy crops. The power plant project requires consent from the local authorities, which is why Peel Energy has organized a public consultation about the project.
Some of the benefits from the new project are new jobs (100 during construction, 15 permanent afterwards) and clean electricity for about 37,000 average homes in the area. Additionally, the company is considering supplying excess generated heat to the local industry, businesses and housing in the area.
[source: Peel Energy]
