“Drop-in” Biofuels Production Facility

Colorado-based Sundrop Fuels has signed a comprehensive Front End Engineering and License Agreement with Uhde for design of what will be one of the first renewable gasoline production facilities in the world. As part of the agreement, Sundrop Fuels has selected ThyssenKrupp Uhde’s High-Temperature Winkler (HTW) process for biomass gasification as a key element of the plant.  

The fully integrated production plant will convert biomass by means of commercially available gasification, gas purification, methanol synthesis and methanol to gasoline (MTG) processes into affordable, immediately usable renewable gasoline. Construction of the “drop-in” biofuels plant located near Alexandria, Louisiana is scheduled to begin late this year.

The contracts were concluded between Sundrop Fuels and Uhde Corporation of America, which belongs to the ThyssenKrupp group. Uhde Corporation of America is business partner of ThyssenKrupp Uhde GmbH, Germany.

The Sundrop Fuels project will uniquely combine natural gas with wood-waste biomass for the generation of environment-friendly and sustainable clean transportation fuels. The plant will have a capacity of approximately 3,500 barrels of ultra-clean, grade gasoline per day and is planned to begin operation in late 2014. Long lead items will be ordered within the next few months.

“Our partnership with ThyssenKrupp Uhde represents a critical milestone toward Sundrop Fuels mission to help meet the world’s renewable fuels needs,” said Chief Executive Officer, Dr. Wayne Simmons.  “Working together, our companies will deploy many larger scale, drop-in biofuel facilities, creating tremendous long-term benefits for both the environment and the global economy.  We look forward to many exciting milestone ahead.”

An international task force consisting of engineering teams from all involved companies, such as Sundrop Fuels, ThyssenKrupp Uhde, technology providers, licensors, engineering and construction companies and consulting and owners engineers are working in full swing on the execution of the Front End Engineering Design (FEED) work.

ThyssenKrupp Uhde is among the world leaders in coal and biomass gasification and has over 70 years of experience in coal gasification. Due to the current energy market situation, Uhde Corporation of America sees a significant increase in the demand for biomass and natural gas for alternative energy projects; the Sundrop Fuels plant is one that will demonstrate the suitability of biomass as a reliable and cost-effective source for generation of highly valuable transportation fuels.

With its proprietary solids gasification technologies HTW (fluidised-bed gasification) and PRENFLO (entrained-flow gasification), ThyssenKrupp Uhde is able to take almost all available feedstocks, such as hard coal and lignite, high-ash coal, petcoke, various biomasses or household waste, and convert them into highly lucrative products. PRENFLO and HTW have already been selected by a number of customers in the recent past for worldwide projects for the generation of electricity, hydrogen, gasoline, diesel, chemical products and for direct reduction in the steel industry.