Air Products to supply gases for INEOS Bio plant
Air Products has been awarded a contract to supply onsite oxygen, compressed dry air, and nitrogen to INEOS Bio's joint venture project for a waste-to-ethanol facility in Vero Beach, Florida.
Air Products will supply gaseous oxygen from a PRISM VSA oxygen generation system as well as bulk liquid oxygen and liquid nitrogen delivered to the site by trucks.
Operations are scheduled to begin in the second quarter of 2012.
Advanced biofuels plants, such as the INEOS facility, are based on production from non-food feedstocks. This commercial facility is designed to produce 8 million gal/year of bio ethanol fuel and six mw (gross) of renewable electricity from various wastes, including yard, vegetative and household wastes.
This eliminates the need to grow crops as a raw material and avoids competition for land-use with the food supply chain by using waste cellulosic materials from farms and households as well as municipal solid waste, the company said.
"We are very excited to have received this contract award in the advanced biofuels market,” said Nelson Squires, vice president of North America merchant gases at Air Products. “Over the past few years, Air Products has seen growing interest in industrial gas supply for advanced biofuels projects. “
Renewable Fuel Standards (RFS-2) in the US are driving substantial project activity in the area of advanced biofuels, company officials said. Many of these projects require industrial gases, particularly oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen.
In this area, oxygen is used primarily for gasification, hydrogen for oil upgrading to final biofuel products, and nitrogen as an inert and fluidizing medium.
Global market demand for biofuels is likely to support significant growth in industrial gas use over the next 10 years, according to Air Products.
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