Malaysian biodiesel plant contract awarded

Australian-based Mission Biofuels will build a 250,000 tonne a year biodiesel plant using Esterfip-H technology from Axens, a French-headquartered refining and petrochemical technology company.

The plant will be the largest of its kind, and will be constructed at a site adjacent to the current 100,000 tonne a year plant in Kuantan Port, Malaysia, due for completion in October 2007.

Esterfip-H is a heterogeneous catalysed technology for the production of fatty acid methyl esters (FAME). Esterfip-H does not require caustic or mineral acid usage and the glycerin by-product is of high technical grade quality, above 98% purity.

The Mission Biofuels unit will run on crude palm oil (CPO), with Esterfip-H units able to operate on multiple vegetable oils. Mission Biofuels’ biodiesel will be exported to the European market. Malaysia is the world’s largest producer of CPO.

The first commercial Esterfip-H unit was opened in March 2006 by Diester Industrie in Sète, France. A second plant was completed in May 2007 at Perstorp's Stenungsund, Sweden, chemical complex and six more Esterfip-H plants are at different project stages around the world for a cumulative capacity of 1.3 million tonnes a year.