As catalytic hydrotreating of liquid biomass has given promising results, the industrial world has given enough confidence to apply it in pilot and industrial scale. The NesteOil Corporation has developed the NExBTL technology for converting vegetable oil (primarily palm oil) into a renewable diesel also known as "green" diesel (Figure 9). Based on this tech­nology the first catalytic hydrotreatment of vegetable oils unit was constructed in Finland in 2007, within the existing Poorvo refinery of NesteOil, with a capacity of 170 kton/hr. The pri­mary feedstock is palm oil, while it can also process rapeseed oil and even waste cooking oil. The same company has constructed a second unit within the same refinery while it has also planned to construct two new units, one in Singapore and one in Rotterdam, with the capacity of 800 kton/yr each.

Oils / Fats

Acids

Bases

Water

H2

The catalytic hydrotreatment technology of 100% waste cooking oil for biodiesel production was developed in the Centre for Research and Technology Hellas (CERTH) in Thessaloniki, Greece [21—24] and later demonstrated via the BIOFUELS-2G project [59], which was co­
funded by the European Program LIFE". In this project WCO was collected from associated restaurants and the produced 2nd generation bio-diesel, to be called "white diesel" was em­ployed. For the demonstration of the new technology, 2 tons of "white diesel’ were pro­duced via catalytic hydrotreatment of WCO based on the large-scale pilot units available in CERTH. The production process simplified diagram is given in Figure 10. The new fuel will be applied to a garbage truck in a 50-50 mixture with conventional diesel in August 2012, aiming to promote the new technology as it exhibits overall yields exceeding 92% v/v.

In the USA the Dynamic Fuels company [60] has constructed in Baton Rouge a catalytic hy­drotreating unit dedicated to oils and animal fats with 285 Mlit capacity. The unit employs the Syntroleum technology based on Fischer-Tropsch for the production of synthetic 2nd gen­eration Biodiesel while it also produces bio-naphtha and bio-LPG. The Bio-Synfining tech­nology of Syntroleum converts the triglycerides of fats and oils into n — and iso-paraffins via catalytic hydrogenation, thermal cracking and isomerization as it is applied in the Fischer — Tropsch wax upgrading to renewable diesel (R-2) and renewable jet (R-8) fuel.

Figure 10. Pilot-scale demo application of WCO catalytic hydrotreatment during the BIOFUELS-2G project [59]