UPM Wins Sustainable Biofuels Award
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UPM, Helsinki, Finland, has received the Sustainability Award 2013 for Breakthrough Innovation in Technology in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. The award which recognizes the innovation that is taking place in the development of truly sustainable and renewable fuels is presented by the World Biofuels Markets Congress & Exhibition. UPM Biofuels received the Sustainable Biofuels Award due to its success in developing an innovative production process for an advanced renewable diesel, UPM BioVerno. The award was judged by an elite panel of independent industry experts.
UPM was the winner of the Breakthrough Innovation in Technology Award because of the UPM BioVerno product characteristics corresponding to traditional fuel with the greenhouse gas emissions being reduced by up to 80%.
According to Event Director Claire Poole, "the Sustainable Biofuels Awards recognize the tremendous innovation that is taking place in the development of truly sustainable and renewable fuels, and the key success factor of this novel drop-in fuel is sustainability. The feedstock is wood-based, non-food origin, with no indirect land use change. A truly sustainable achievement."
Petri Kukkonen, VP of UPM Biofuels Business, noted that "during the last few years we have made progress with remarkable R&D work and important investments for developing wood-based biofuels. UPM aims to become a major player in advanced biofuels so this recognition confirms that we have managed to make significant progress in this field."
UPM BioVerno is a high quality transport fuel that works well in modern vehicles and is fully compatible with existing fuel distribution systems. It has been tested for its properties, functionality, and emissions in various laboratories including VTT (Technical Research Centre of Finland) and FEV (Forschungsgesellschaft für Energietechnik und Verbrennungsmotoren GmbH) in Germany.
BioVerno decreases greenhouse gas emissions significantly, the company said. The greenhouse gas reduction of approximately 80%,it added, is calculated for the whole lifecycle, taking into account all energy used in the plant and utilities used in production.
BioVerno is produced from crude tall oil (CTO), a residue from the chemical pulping process. The main phases of the process are pretreatment of crude tall oil, hydrotreatment, recycle gas purification, and fractionation. Converting CTO to biofuel is an innovative way to use that residue without changing the main process, which is pulp production. This method makes additional use of an existing UPM residue, and also avoids any raw materials that could be used for food production, UPM explains.
"Coming from the forest industry we benefit from our profound experience in forest biomass and extensive resources that can be used effectively for developing biofuels business and executing large scale biofuel projects," said Heikki Vappula, president of the Energy and Pulp Business Group of UPM.
Currently, UPM is building a hydrogenation biorefinery on its Kaukas paper and pulp mill site in Lappeenranta, Finland. The biorefinery will produce 100,000 metric tons of renewable diesel for transport, equating to 120 million liters annually. The investment of EUR 150 million is the first industrial scale investment in this field globally. Site construction will be completed in 2014.
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