Sustainable and carbon-efficient mono-Ethylene Glycol generation in demonstration PLANT

ended

The EGgPLANT project will scale up in a demonstration plant a novel method to produce monoethylene glycol (MEG) from renewable carbohydrates using a highly carbon efficient catalytic process. The global MEG market demand is growing from a current base of 30 Mton/year to over 50 Mton by 2035, requiring more than a million tons of additional supply every year for the next twenty years. Today, almost all of the MEG produced globally is from fossil sources despite a stated need from forward-looking brand owners, packaging and textile companies to source MEG from renewable sources. There is one provider of bio-based MEG on the market which is using an inefficient and expensive process compared to lower cost oil, shale gas, and coal-based alternatives. This high cost position is hampering the widespread use of bio-based MEG. To address this issue, Avantium has developed a one-step ‘Mekong’ process for producing bio-MEG from renewable sources which can compete with the incumbent fossil-based product on both cost and quality, making the product competitive in the global marketplace and poised to be a sustainable supply solution to address the increasing demand. The demonstration plant (11 ton/year) built and operated in this project allows for techno-economic scale-up and evaluation of the process, in addition to producing relevant sample quantities of product to support downstream validation in at least three applications, collecting of data to conduct a third-party environmental life-cycle assessment (LCA) and preparation for scale-up to industrial size plants. The next phase after this project is to deploy a 200 kton/year Mekong flagship plant with a strategic partner in Europe. Target customers of this flagship plant will primarily be European polyethylene terephthalate (PET) producers. Avantium and the strategic partner will deploy subsequent industrial scale plants in Europe, and will license out the technology to parties in geographies other than Europe.