A Finnish Corporation, Neste Oil, has expanded the range of renewable raw materials it uses by beginning to produce NExBTL renewable diesel from waste fat sourced from the fish processing industry at its Singapore refinery. The waste fish fat used as raw material comes from freshwater Pangasius farmed in Southeast Asia.
Farmed mainly in Vietnam and Thailand, fresh water Pangasius farming is one of the fastest growing types of aquaculture in the world. Good news is that Neste Oil, a Finnish refining and marketing company focusing on advanced, cleaner traffic fuels, can now produce a premium-quality NExBTL renewable diesel from the gutting waste generated when processing freshwater Pangasius after the fillets have been removed for human consumption.
Similar to other renewable inputs used by Neste Oil, this batch of waste fish fat complies with the strict sustainability requirements of the EU’s Renewable Energy Directive. The batch can be traced all the way back to the fish farm. Waste fish fat is also accepted as a raw material for renewable fuel in the US. The NExBTL renewable diesel produced from the batch cuts greenhouse gas emissions by approximately 84 per cent when compared to fossil diesel and calculated over the fuel’s entire life cycle. Using NExBTL diesel also reduces tailpipe and fine particulate emissions significantly.
“It makes good ecological sense to use waste and sidestreams to produce advanced, premium-quality renewable fuel, which is why our goal this year is to increase the amount of by-products and waste we use as raw materials by hundreds of thousands of tons compared to 2011,” says Matti Lehmus, Neste Oil’s Executive Vice President, Oil Products and Renewables.
“In addition to focusing on waste and sidestreams, we are continuing R&D on completely new types of raw materials. We are currently building Europe’s first pilot plant to produce microbial oil from waste and residues-based raw materials at our Technology Center in Porvoo, Finland, and expect to complete it during the second half of this year, in line with our previous announcement,” he added.
A particular strength of Neste Oil’s NExBTL technology is that it is capable of processing a very wide variety of different bio-based raw materials - such as vegetable oils, waste animal fat, and by-products from vegetable oil production - into NExBTL renewable diesel. All the raw materials used by Neste Oil result in premium-quality NExBTL fuel.
