New Middle East Refinery to Produce Honeywell's Green Fuels

UOP LLC, a Honeywell company, says that its green fuels process technology has been selected by Petrixo Oil & Gas to produce renewable jet fuel and renewable diesel at a new refinery to be built in Fujairah, United Arab Emirates.

Petrixo will use UOP Renewable Jet Fuel process technology to process approximately 500,000 metric tons per year of renewable feedstocks into renewable jet fuel and renewable diesel, also known as Honeywell Green Jet Fuel and Honeywell Green Diesel. The process technology is capable of processing a variety of renewable feedstocks.

Petrixo announced earlier this year that it will invest $800 million to build the new refinery, which will have a design capacity of 1 million tons per year of biofuel products, and will be the first commercial-scale renewable jet fuel production facility outside of North America.

“Petrixo believes that new energy solutions are immensely important for scalable, environmental and renewable solutions,” said Dr. Eid Al Olayyan, chief executive officer of Petrixo Oil & Gas. “UOP’s green fuels technologies are proven refining solutions that produce high-quality products compatible with petroleum-based fuels.”

The UOP technology is designed to provide flexibility to adjust the feedstock mix depending on parameters such as cost and availability. The technology also enables the adoption of newer-generation feedstocks, such as oils derived from algae and halophytes, as scalable supply chains for these lipids develop.

“UOP’s renewable process technologies produce real fuels, rather than fuel additives such as biodiesel, that fit seamlessly into existing fuel supply chains,” said Veronica May, vice president and general manager of UOP’s Renewable Energy and Chemicals business unit. “The renewable fuels produced by our technology also offer lower greenhouse gas emissions relative to traditional petroleum-based fuels.”

Honeywell’s UOP Renewable Jet Fuel Process technology was developed in 2007 under a contract from the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to produce renewable military jet fuel for the U.S. military. The process technology is fully compatible with existing hydroprocessing technology commonly used in today’s refineries to produce transportation fuels.

The process technology also produces Honeywell Green Diesel, a drop-in replacement for traditional diesel. The fuel offers improved performance over biodiesel and petroleum-based diesel, including a higher cetane value compared with the cetane range of 40 to 60 found in diesel at the pump today.

Cetane value is the measure of the combustion quality of diesel. Higher cetane values help diesel engines operate more effectively. Diesel with high cetane can be blended with low-cetane diesel to help meet transportation requirements. Honeywell Green Diesel also offers high energy density and excellent performance at both cold and warm temperatures.

UOP adds that Petrixo, based in Dubai, is part of Petrixo Group, which is active in trading crude oil, oil products and petrochemicals, with an interest in downstream energy projects and logistics operations in the Baltic States, the Russian Federation, CIS and the Middle East. The new Fujairah refinery will occupy 460,000 square meters in the Fujairah free zone and the Port of Fujairah.

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