Launched in August 2019 the most innovative biofuel production plant in Europe, it will be able to use charges up to 100% of second generation raw materials
Eni has created the most innovative European biorefinery in Gela. Started in August 2019, with a processing capacity up to 750.000 tons per year, will be able to progressively treat high quantities of used and frying vegetable oils, animal fats, algae and waste by-products to produce high quality biofuels.
In Gela all the petrochemical plants built since the 1962 have been stopped: 294 million euros have been spent to date for the conversion of the refinery, to which are added further 73 million of investments planned for further preparatory activities and for the realization of the future biomass pre-treatment plant, which will be completed by the third quarter 2020 and will enable the biorefinery to be powered entirely with second-generation raw materials, consisting of waste, raw vegetable oils and advanced materials.
The conversion process from traditional refinery to biorefinery started in April. 2016 was completed after more than 3 million hours of work by Eni people and third-party companies with the important milestone reaching zero injuries. To realize the Ecofining ™ plant, the two existing desulphurization units were modified and the “Steam Reforming” was built for the production of hydrogen, a fundamental component in the production process of HVO (Hydrogenated Vegetable Oil), ie the biodiesel that , added to the fossil fuel in an amount equal to 15%, it composes the Enidiesel + premium fuel.
Eni's CEO, Claudio Descalzi, commented: "It is a very important day for us. In Venice we were the first in the world to convert a traditional refinery into a biorefinery and now we are inaugurating the second, even more innovative one: a new example of Italian excellence. This is a great step forward in our decarbonisation process, a path that we have been taking since Eni, but to which we have given a very strong acceleration in the last five years, investing significantly in efficiency, and in particular in the production of green energy, on renewables and the circular economy, through the transformation of organic and inorganic substances, minimizing waste and enhancing waste and waste materials. All this by developing research, technologies and industrial initiatives that will represent real future business lines for Eni. And we are doing a significant part of this process in Italy. Gela, in particular, plays a leading role in this sense: in addition to the new biorefinery, the Gelese site hosts the Waste to fuel pilot plant, which since last December transforms organic waste into bio oil, bio methane and water, and is destined to become for Eni a laboratory for the application of the most advanced technologies in the environmental and renewable fields ".
There are over a thousand Eni workers employed on the Gela site, including 426 in the biorefinery.
The realization of the Eni biorefinery of Gela guarantees the improvement of all the environmental matrices thanks to the abatement of emissions (SO2, NOX, CO, dust) higher than 70% compared to the traditional cycle. On the environmental front, reclamation work continues, for which more than 800 million have been spent by the 2000 to date.
In order to improve the visual impact of the site, numerous interventions will be carried out: the already demolished chimney will be replaced by the removal of the old highest torch, which will be replaced by new ones of a lower height and that improve the environmental impact. Numerous demolition works of various infrastructures have also been completed, including tanks, loading shelters, gas recovery and diesel oil desulfurization and petrol fractionation facilities. The skyline of the industrial area is destined to improve with the planned interventions up to the 2022, including the demolition of the SNox chimney no longer in use.
The Eni biorefinery in Gela is designed to handle advanced and unconventional charges up to 100% of the processing capacity, and is one of the few biorefineries in the world with high operational flexibility. The characteristic of processing second generation raw materials, so-called "unconventional", deriving from food production waste, such as regenerated used cooking oil (RUCO, regenerated used cooking oil), animal fats (tallow) and by-products related to oil processing plants makes Gela an innovative plant with high environmental sustainability, which allows to process charges that would go to disposal, with an increase in costs for the community and impact on the environment, enhancing them with biofuel, in compliance with the requirements of the circular economy.