CHINA Huaneng Group's Investment in Biomass Cogen Energy

Notes to Self:

Construction of clean coal/biomass plant on Jurong Island begins

China Huaneng plant to draw new petrochemical investors
EDB says some have reserved land at Tembusu, but not started on projects
Ronnie Lim Business Times 12 Nov 09;

CHINA Huaneng Group's latest $2 billion clean coal/biomass cogeneration investment on Jurong Island - which is expected to shave 10 per cent off customers' utilities bills - will be a catalyst in helping to draw new petrochemical investors at the greenfield Tembusu sector.

The project will contribute significantly to the petrochemical island's integration strategy, 'especially as competitive utilities options are particularly critical to the energy and chemical industry, which is a large consumer of steam and power', said Economic Development Board (EDB) chairman Leo Yip at its groundbreaking yesterday.

While he did not specifically say so, the project should encourage chemical companies, which Mr Yip said, 'despite adopting a cautious approach during the recession, are continuing their project studies on new investments, in readiness for the upturn'.

A number of petrochemical investors have already reserved land at Tembusu, but have not started building their projects yet, according to Julian Ho, who heads a multiple portfolio including chemicals at the EDB, but he declined to name them.

Germany's Lanxess is, for instance, expected to start building its 400 million euro (S$832 million) synthetic rubber plant at Tembusu around mid-2011. Others in the wings include the Jurong Aromatics Corporation US$2 billion project and possibly Mitsui Chemicals.

Despite still-shaky economies, Cao Peixi, China Huaneng president and chairman of Huaneng Power International - which bought Tuas Power for $4.2 billion - said that the group was confident enough about the Singapore market to give the go-ahead to its Tembusu Multi-Utilities Complex (TMUC).

'Investing in Singapore is an important part of Huaneng's global strategy,' he said.

'We will leverage on our expertise and resources to support Tuas Power's growth and maintain its competitive advantage in the Singapore energy market . . . at the same time, we also hope that we will be able to contribute to Singapore's energy diversity and security.'

The TMUC project - which will use low-sulphur coal (80 per cent of the fuel mix) and palm shell kernels and wood waste (20 per cent) - will provide 160MW of electricity and about 1,000 tonnes of steam per hour when completed. It will also provide chilled water and treat industrial waste.

Because of the use of biomass, the plant's advanced technology such as special circulating fluidised boilers, and careful handling of the coal and coal ash, TMUC's emission levels will even be lower than some oil-fired power plants.

Furthermore, as each unit of electricity is produced at a lower cost, it will translate to cost savings of about 10 per cent of a customer's utilities bill compared with energy generated by a gas-fired plant, the company said.

Lim Kong Puay, Tuas Power president and CEO, said that while the original plan was to build the entire project at one go, it will now do so in tandem with customer demand. This will see the project being done in two phases, with part of the clean coal/biomass cogeneration plant ready by 2012, and the rest by 2014.

Financing for the $2 billion project will come from equity from the parent company, as well as from bank financing.

While the 2,670MW Tuas Power currently has a 24-25 per cent share of Singapore's electricity market, Mr Lim declined to give a figure on what its targeted share of the utilities market on Jurong Island will be, come 2014. 'The Jurong Island market is big enough for a new player,' he would only say.

'We see the standalone TMUC project as a long-term investment commitment, and as is (with China Huaneng's go-ahead), we are already seeing renewed interest coming from potential customers there.'

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Construction of S$2b multi-utilities plant begins on Jurong Island
Ryan Huang, Channel NewsAsia 11 Nov 09;

SINGAPORE: Construction works have begun on the Tembusu Multi-Utilities Complex - a S$2 billion facility on Jurong Island for generating steam, chilled water, electricity and treating industrial waste.

The multi-utilities plant is expected to help develop Singapore's petrochemical sector, as well as bolster the country's energy security.

"As a utilities provider, it is important to put in the necessary infrastructure in place, and this will provide the impetus for new investors to invest in Jurong Island," said Lim Kong Puay, president & CEO, Tuas Power.

The move is in line with the nation's plans to develop the Tembusu area of Jurong Island as a new petrochemical sector over the next five years.

The new plant is expected to be about 10 per cent more cost-efficient than conventional ones due to synergies from producing the various utilities. One example is the simultaneous production of steam and electricity.

The facility will be completed in two phases, and will be partially ready by 2012. The rest of the complex will be ready by 2014.

The facility will be run by Tuas Power, which is a member of China Huaneng Group. It represents one of the most significant Chinese investments in Singapore and is expected to further enhance the island's position as a platform for firms to go international.

Leo Yip, chairman, Singapore Economic Development Board, said: "We welcome the opening of Tuas Power's Tembusu Multi-Utilities Complex to enhance the range of third party utilities options as well as competitiveness on Jurong Island.

"With Asia becoming an increasingly important consumer of energy and chemical products, Singapore is well positioned to be a strategic base for Chinese energy and chemical companies seeking to internationalise and access new markets to drive business opportunities."

- CNA/sc

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Cheaper power for petrochem firms
Jonathan Kwok, Straits Times 11 Nov 09;

PETROCHEMICAL companies looking to set up processing plants at the Tembusu area of Jurong island can look forward to around 10 per cent of savings on their utility bills, with the construction of Tuas Power's $2 billion multi-utilities plant there.

The plant, with an initial opening planned for 2012, will supply steam, chilled water and electricity, which when co-produced, will lead to higher efficiency.

These cost savings will be passed on to customers through more competitive rates, which will be around 10 per cent lower when compared to energy from gas-fired plants, said Mr Lim Kong Puay, president and chief executive of Tuas Power, at the plant's official ground-breaking ceremony on Wednesday.

Tembusu is an as-yet-undeveloped area in the northwest of Jurong island that the Economic Development Board has earmarked for growing the petrolchemicals industry.

With a US$3 billion (S$4.17 billion) petrochemical cracker complex by Shell to be completed on Pulau Bukom by the first quarter of next year, Mr Julian Ho, executive director of energy, chemicals and engineering services at EDB, expects interest from downstream companies to set up processing facilities at Tembusu.

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Foundation stone ceremony at Neste Oil's NExBTL renewable diesel plant in Singapore

Taken from: Fox Business News

Friday, March 06, 2009

ESPOO, FINLAND, Mar 06, 2009 (MARKET WIRE via COMTEX) ----- project proceeding on schedule and budget

Neste Oil held today a Foundation Stone Ceremony to officiate the construction of its EUR 550 million NExBTL renewable diesel plant in Singapore. Neste Oil's President and CEO Mr Matti Lievonen was in attendance, and Mr Lim Hng Kiang, Minister for Trade and Industry, Singapore was the Guest-of-Honour at the event.

"The construction of our NExBTL renewable diesel plant in Singapore is proceeding on schedule and on budget. The market has been highly unpredictable in the past year but the Singapore plant plays an important part in our long-term strategy for growth, and our commitment to the project remains solid. We are very grateful to the local government for the support they have given us and look forward to when the plant is officially inaugurated in 2010," stated Mr Matti Lievonen.

Upon completion in 2010, Neste Oil's renewable diesel plant in Singapore will be the largest in the world with an annual capacity of 800,000 metric tons. Neste Oil's patented NExBTL technology allows flexible use of any vegetable oil or animal fat in the production of NExBTL renewable diesel, the cleanest diesel in the world. NExBTL-diesel is the only renewable diesel in the world that is fully compatible with existing diesel engines and logistics systems. The use of NExBTL-diesel significantly reduces greenhouse gas and tailpipe emissions compared to even the best fossil fuels, thereby contributing to better air quality. Feedstock, to be used at the NExBTL renewable diesel plant, are animal fat, palm oil and other types of vegetable oils. When fully operational, the plant will employ around 100 people.

Neste Oil Corporation

Osmo Kammonen Senior Vice President, Communications

More information: Mr Jarmo Honkamaa, Deputy CEO and Executive Vice President, Renewable Fuels, tel. +358 10 458 4758

About Neste Oil

Neste Oil Corporation is a refining and marketing company concentrating on low-emission, high-quality traffic fuels. The company's strategy is based on growing both its oil refining and premium-quality renewable diesel businesses. Neste Oil's refineries are located in Porvoo and Naantali and have a combined crude oil refining capacity of approx. 260,000 barrels a day. The company had net sales of EUR 15 billion in 2008 and employs around 5,200 people. Neste Oil's share is listed on the NASDAQ OMX Helsinki. www.nesteoil.com.

About NExBTL renewable diesel

NExBTL renewable diesel is an advanced fuel, based on renewable raw materials, that performs more efficiently and has a lower level of environmental impact than fossil diesel or FAME-type biodiesel. Neste Oil requires its raw material suppliers to commit to responsible and sustainable production methods. Feedstock of this type ensures that NExBTL renewable diesel has a 40-60% lower level of greenhouse gas emissions over its entire lifecycle compared to fossil diesel. NExBTL renewable diesel can be blended with conventional diesel fuel or used as such, and it is suitable for all diesel engines.

This announcement was originally distributed by Hugin. The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement.

Copyright Copyright Hugin AS 2009. All rights reserved.

SOURCE: Neste Oil Oy

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From The Business Times, Singapore

Growing Market for Singapore Renewable Diesel Plant

By RONNIE LIM

OTHER investors may be scrapping their projects but it's flashing 'green' for Neste Oil's $2.4 billion investment in Singapore and Rotterdam. The Finnish giant is brimming with confidence about its two renewable-diesel refinery plants that cost $1.2 billion apiece and that will start operations in 2010 and 2011 respectively.

DOING THE SPADE WORK (From left) Mr Honkamaa, Mr Lim, Mr Lievonen and Neste Oil managing director Olli Virtas laying the foundation for Neste Oil's renewable diesel plant in Singapore

In fact, it is already considering adding second lines at both to produce either more renewable diesel, or even renewable jet fuel for aircraft.

'We have no other competitor in 2G, or second-generation, biodiesel manufacturing,' Matti Lievonen, Neste's president and CEO, told media after a foundation stone-laying ceremony at its Tuas site. The two plants, when completed, will make Neste - until now, mainly a traditional oil refiner - the leading global producer of renewable diesel.

Both plants are 'on schedule and on budget', he said. Financing is not an issue at all, as Neste has a credit line of 1.6 billion euros (S$3.1 billion) until 2011, plus it has over 500 million euros in cash flow from last year.

Besides, given growing environmental concerns, the European Union is expected to pass legislation enforcing greater use of such renewable fuels soon. 'This is the whole logic for our renewable diesel - a market which mandates use of biofuels,' said deputy CEO Jarmo Honkamaa.

After earlier targeting 5.75 per cent mandatory biofuel use by 2010, the latest EU directive is that measures must be taken by all member countries to replace a minimum 10 per cent of all transport fossil fuels (petrol and diesel) with biofuels by 2010.

The Neste officials said this in response to questions on whether today's low oil prices of around US$40 - which means that normal diesel is roughly half the price of biodiesel - would impact the economics of its Singapore and Rotterdam biodiesel investments.

Each plant will produce 800,000 tonnes per annum (tpa) of renewable diesel - the largest such facility in the world - from one million tpa of renewable materials comprising vegetable oils such as palm oil, animal fat or tallow.

Neste - which operates two crude-oil refineries in Porvoo and Naantali with a total capacity of 260,000 barrels - already has a 170,000 tpa biodiesel plant at Porvoo, and is set to start up a second biodiesel plant of similar scale there this July.

'Neste is sourcing its biodiesel raw materials like palm oil and tallow on a group-wide basis, and is in talks with suppliers, like for instance, for jatropha in Thailand,' Mr Honkamaa said. Depending on the costs, over half of each plant's raw materials can be palm oil, with the rest tallow, although the biofuel refineries are completely flexible in their feedstock mix.

Neste is already in talks with big oil companies to take biodiesel from its Singapore and Rotterdam plants. 'We don't see a challenge in (securing) markets, the challenge is more in raw materials,' Mr Honkamaa said.

Speaking at the ceremony, Trade & Industry Minister Lim Hng Kiang said that Neste's project 'affirms Singapore's position as a trusted business destination', adding that 'the outlook of the energy and chemicals industries remains positive'. Underlying this, he said, are two main factors: the increasing emphasis on addressing environmental challenges and the Asian growth story, especially in China and India, and increasingly, Asean.

The By-products of Biodiesel Production Are Valuable Organic Acids, Researchers Say

by Jade Boyd, Rice News Staff
July 22, 2008

In a move that could possibly change the economics of biodiesel refining, chemical engineers at Rice University have come up with a set of techniques for converting sometimes problematic biofuels waste into chemicals that fetch a profit.

The latest research, which was funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the National Science Foundation, Rice University and Glycos Biotechnologies, involves a new fermentation process that allows E. coli and other enteric bacteria to convert glycerin — the major waste byproduct of biodiesel production — into formate, succinate and other valuable organic acids.

"Biodiesel producers used to sell their leftover glycerin, but the rapid increase in biodiesel production has left them paying to get rid of it," said lead researcher Ramon Gonzalez, Rice's William W. Akers Assistant Professor in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. "The new metabolic pathways we have uncovered paved the way for the development of new technologies for converting this waste product into high-value chemicals."

About one pound of glycerin, also known as glycerol, is created for every 10 pounds of biodiesel produced. According to the National Biodiesel Board, U.S. companies produced about 450 million gallons of biodiesel in 2007, and about 60 new plants with a production capacity of 1.2 billion gallons are slated to open by 2010.

Gonzalez's team last year announced a new method of glycerol fermentation that used E. coli to produce ethanol, another biofuel. Even though the process was very efficient, with operational costs estimated to be about 40 percent less that those of producing ethanol from corn, Gonzalez said new fermentation technologies that produce high-value chemicals like succinate and formate hold even more promise for biodiesel refiners because those chemicals are more profitable than ethanol.

"With fundamental research, we have identified the pathways and mechanisms that mediate glycerol fermentation in E. coli," Gonzalez said. "This knowledge base is enabling our efforts to develop new technologies for converting glycerol into high-value chemicals."

Gonzalez said scientists previously believed that the only organisms that could ferment glycerol were those capable of producing a chemical called 1,3-propanediol, also known as 1,3-PDO. Unfortunately, neither the bacterium E. coli nor the yeast Saccharomyces — the two workhorse organisms of biotechnology — were able to produce 1,3-PDO.

Gonzalez's research revealed a metabolic pathway for glycerol fermentation, one that uses 1,2-PDO, a chemical similar to 1,3-PDO, that E. coli can produce.

"The reason this probably hadn't been discovered before is that E. coli requires a particular set of fermentation conditions for this pathway to be activated," Gonzalez said. "It wasn't easy to zero in on these conditions, so it wasn't the sort of process that someone would stumble upon by accident."

Once the new metabolic pathways were identified, Gonzalez's team began using metabolic engineering to design new versions of E. coli that could produce a range of high-value products. For example, while basic E. coli ferments glycerol to produce very little succinate, Gonzalez's team has created a new version of the bacterium that produces up to 100 times more. Succinate is a high-demand chemical feedstock that's used to make everything from noncorrosive airport deicers and nontoxic solvents to plastics, drugs and food additives. Most succinate today comes from nonrenewable fossil fuels.

Gonzalez said he's had similar success with organisms designed to produce other high-value chemicals, including formate and lactate.

"Our goal goes beyond using this for a single process," he said. "We want to use the technology as a platform for the 'green' production of a whole range of high-value products."

Technologies based on Gonzalez's work have been licensed to Glycos Biotechnologies Inc., a Houston-based startup company that plans to open its first demonstration facility within the next 12 months.

Companies/Products to Track in Singapore and the Region

Work-in-Progress

Key Players/Partners for Process Water, Oil & Gas, Petrochemicals, Biofuels, Power Generation, Renewable Energy and Semiconductor Manufacturing.

Singapore:

Heaters -
Thermal & Process Services
Vatana Phaisal Engineering Co Ltd

Control & Electrics -
Bifold Fluid Power Ltd
Siemens Pte ltd
Singapore Valve & Fitting Pte Ltd
S.U.A Engineering Pte Ltd
Hydraulic Systems Pte Ltd
Allied Energy Systems Pte Ltd

Singapore Water Solutions Alliance [SWSA]
Salcon Water
Milton Roy Asia Pacific Pte Ltd
Ritz Pumps Pte Ltd
Schneider Electric Singapore Pte Ltd


Southeast Asia:

Indonesia -
Agung Sedaya Group
PT. Maruna Grahamineral


Malaysia -
Syarikat Steelcon Sdn Bhd



Northeast Asia:

Japan -

Mitsui & Co


Korea -



China -
Jiangsu Taihu Boiler Co Ltd