Italian oil and gas company Eni has proposed building a third bio-refinery at its Livorno site to produce hydrotreated vegetable oil (HVO).
The proposal would comprise three new biofuel plants: a biogenic feedstock pre-treatment unit, a 500,000 tonnes/year Ecofining plant and a plant for producing hydrogen from methane gas, the company said on 17 October.
“The co-existence of bio and traditional plants has been successfully tested with the recent production of Eni Biojet in Livorno… sustainable aviation fuel (SAF)… [made] from waste raw materials, animal fats and used vegetable oils thanks to the synergy with Eni’s bio-refinery in Gela,” Eni’s Energy Evolution chief operating officer Giuseppe Ricci said.
“Our goal is to increase the availability of decarbonised and sustainable products to our customers and to meet our scope 3 emission reduction targets.”
The design of the three new plants in Livorno was due for completion by 2023 with construction taking place by 2025.
Eni produces 1.1M tonnes/year of biofuels and aims to increase this volume to 2M tonnes/year by 2025 and 6M tonnes/year in the next decade.
The company has said it would stop processing palm oil from 2023.
