Catalytic Slury Hydrotreatment

Actions to mitigate the climate change would require dramatic transformation of critical value chains in energy, transportation and chemicals sectors, and will take place via development and implementation of sustainable fossil-free technologies. Sustainable, low carbon paths to chemicals, polymers and transportation fuels are thereby needed to secure supply of crucial materials of high demand and societal value. The target of this project is to secure Finland's leading position in developing and exploiting innovative technologies for the upgrading of abundant lignocellulosic biomass to low carbon chemicals, polymers and fuels.

Conversion of lignocellulosic residues to added value fuels or chemicals is among strategic research priorities of Neste Veturi ecosystem. Scalable and economically viable treatment of such complex raw materials would open tremendous opportunities to eliminate fossil-based feedstock, but would require development of a novel process concept along with design of new advanced and robust high performance heterogeneous catalysts.

This research project will aim at developing an innovative process concept for the catalytic hydrotreatment of bio-oils from lignocellulosic biomass liquefaction. Catalyst and process development will be pursued in parallel with development of the concept for catalyst regeneration and active metal recovery. Technical and economic feasilibity of the developed concept will be evaluated on the basis of laboratory scale experiments. The research project will be carried out by three research partners: VTT, Åbo Akademi University and University of Oulu.

The project will establish a consortium with strong industrial representation throughout the value chain to ensure business-oriented steering and goal setting. Consortium companies are SMEs: ESL Shipping, BMH Technology, VG Shipping and Savon Voima, and large companies: Fortum Waste Solutions, Neste, St1 and Valmet.