August 23, 2023 [Biofuels Internationals]- China petrochem company Shandong Haike Chemical has selected Axens’ Vegan® technology to produce sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) by retrofitting its existing assets.

Vegan® technology is a second-generation hydrotreated vegetable oil (HVO) solution which processes up to 100% of any kind of lipid, including wastes from agriculture and food industry to produce renewable fuels.

This new contract with Haike Chemicals is Axens’ first reference for its Vegan® technology in Asia and represents a major opportunity to scale up production of SAF in line with recognised international standards (ASTM D7566) and able to meet growing demand from the European and North American markets.

According to ATAG, the aviation sector will need around 450-500 million tons of SAF per year by 2050 to meet future demand and deliver its decarbonization targets. The challenge is to ramp up production rapidly to deliver economies of scale and make SAF production competitive.

Haike Chemicals aims to have their first SAF-only unit on stream with high yield on-spec production within 12 months before rolling out the process to other units to become a competitive world-leading supplier of high-quality SAF.

Flexibility is the key advantage of Axens’ Vegan® technology in terms of feedstock, product and implementation.

Based on a two-step process, it can process a wide range of feedstocks such as vegetable oils, animal fats, tall oil and used cooking oil to produce SAF or renewable diesel according to market demand.

This technology can be applied in both standalone and integrated refinery environments. In this way, the retrofit of existing hydrotreatment assets into Vegan® units represents a fast-track approach to advance a biorefinery project.

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