Production of biobased chemicals from rapeseed methyl esters begins in Germany
Verbio entered the large-scale production of biobased chemicals in October with an investment of nearly 100-million euros.
The company officially commissioned in October what Verbio said is the world’s first large-scale ethenolysis plant based on rapeseed methyl ester at its Bitterfeld site in Germany.
The new plant is capable of producing up to 60,000 metric tons of biobased chemicals annually—high-quality renewable carbon compounds that can replace fossil-based raw materials in lubricants, detergents and cleaning products, as well as plastics.
With this investment, Verbio is expanding its business model beyond the biofuels market.
In the future, the rapeseed methyl ester produced at the Bitterfeld site will be used not only as a source of energy in the form of biodiesel, but also as a raw material for the production of higher-value chemicals.
This enables Verbio to tap into an additional sales market for a raw material that the company already produces in large quantities.
“With this new production plant we are supplementing our biorefinery with a further stage in the value chain, building on an established raw material base,” said Verbio CEO Claus Sauter. “By processing European rapeseed oil, we are strengthening regional agriculture and reducing our reliance on global supply chains that are prone to disruption. In addition to sustainability considerations, this is of key importance for Germany as a business location.”
This investment comes at a time of far-reaching changes in the European chemical industry.
Increasing international competition, high production costs and the need to shift to a new raw materials base are intensifying the pressure on the sector to transform.
Dorothee Bär, the German federal minister for research, technology and space, said she sees the new plant as an important sign of the future viability of the German and European chemical industries.
“To know what is not yet known by anyone else, and then to do what no one else is doing,” Bär said. “Verbio demonstrates how this is done. You are demonstrating this with your new production plant for biobased specialty chemicals. Your lubricants, plastics and detergents are not manufactured from crude oil, but from biomass such as rapeseed. Wow, what a sensation … With the commissioning of the new production plant, you are sending out a very strong message at a time when the price of crude oil is on everyone’s lips and we are realizing just how dependent we actually are. You have a solution for that. In doing so, you are also ushering in a new era at the Bitterfeld site, with its long industrial heritage.”
Carbon remains an indispensable raw material for the chemical industry.
The industry needs alternative, biobased carbon sources that are available at industrial scale, scalable and economically viable in order to reduce its dependence on fossil raw materials.
With its new biobased specialty chemicals, 1-decene and 9-DAME, Verbio said it has the right solution to this challenge.
Following commissioning, the market ramp-up will begin in stages.
The chemical building blocks that are produced in Bitterfeld must be qualified by customers for their respective applications.
Production volumes are therefore expected to grow gradually in line with the development of customer applications.
“We have made an upfront investment of just under 100-million euros to provide the renewable molecules needed for the transformation,” Sauter said. “It is now up to the chemical industry to make use of this new option. But consumers can also make a contribution to helping locally manufactured biobased products gain a foothold in the market through their purchasing decisions.”
The technological basis of the new production process is ethenolysis, a specific form of olefin metathesis.
Special catalysts from Verbio’s Hungarian subsidiary, XiMo, play a key role in this process.
They enable a targeted conversion of the carbon compounds in rapeseed methyl ester into new molecules for chemical applications.
In 2005, Yves Chauvin, Robert H. Grubbs and Richard R. Schrock were awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their ground-breaking work on olefin metathesis.
For Schrock, the commissioning also had personal significance.
“It is truly special to see today how our research is being put into industrial practice,” he said. “The fact that olefin metathesis is now being used on this scale is a moving moment for me."
