Eni, LG Chem advance joint biorefining project in South Korea

Eni SPA and LG Chem Ltd. have formed an official partnership to proceed with joint development of a proposed grassroots biorefinery to be built at LG Chem’s integrated petrochemical complex in Daesan, Chungcheong Province, South Korea, 80 km southwest of Seoul (OGJ Online, Sept. 14, 2023).

As part of the joint-venture (JV) agreement signed on Jan. 19, Eni-owned Eni Sustainable Mobility SPA’s (ESM) subsidiary Enilive SPA and LG Chem will continue working towards reaching final investment decision (FID) on the project that, if approved, will involve construction of a biorefinery at Daesan that would use the Eni-Honeywell UOP LLC codeveloped proprietary Ecofining technology for flexible processing of about 400,000 tonnes/year of renewable materials for production of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF), hydrotreated vegetable oil (HVO, or renewable diesel), and bionaphtha, the companies said.

Formation of the JV follows the partners’ September-2023 launch of technical and economic feasibility assessments for the potential project that aligns with both companies’ shared objective to meet growing demand for sustainable, low-carbon fuels and plastics as they advance their common goals of achieving sustainable development of decarbonized products and carbon neutrality in line with global energy transition to net-zero emissions.

With FID on the project still on track for some time this year, the companies said they expect to complete the Daesan biorefinery by 2026.

Eni previously said it will use its existing global supply chain to provide the planned biorefinery—which would leverage the Daesan complex’s integrated value chain, including existing utilities and logistics infrastructure— with sustainable feedstock consisting of mainly waste and residues from the processing of vegetable oils, and used cooking oil, but also vegetable oils derived from drought-resistant crops in degraded, semi-arid, or abandoned soils not in competition with the food chain.

Eni first began producing biofuels in 2014 by processing vegetable oils and biomass waste into HVO following conversion of its former 80,000-b/d Venice refinery at Porto Marghera, Italy. Since then, the operator has remained the country’s sole HVO biofuels producer and become Europe’s second largest via ongoing transformations of its conventional Italian refining operations, including a mix of proposed grassroots and expansion projects to grow in-country renewables production capacity (OGJ Online, Oct. 18, 2022; Oct. 15, 2021).