In collaboration with several partners including Versalis, Elevance Renewable Sciences, Inc. completes scale-up of a second-generation biorefinery technology of the company’s olefin metathesis technology, utilizing ethylene and natural oil feedstocks. The ethenolysis process advancement enables an enhanced product portfolio from natural oils metathesis, according to Elevance.
Catalysts produced by XiMo AG were used at Soneas’ manufacturing facility in Budapest, Hungary. The run represented a scale up of 40,000 times what had been previously demonstrated in the laboratory and the largest ever usage of “schrock” (molybdenum/tungsten) catalysts for metathesis with ethylene and a renewable oil, according to Elevance.
The advancement was partially funded by Versalis, the chemical subsidiary of Eni. Versalis and Elevance are also collaborating on the implementation at the Versalis Porto Marghera site of a biorefinery based on Elevance proprietary technology of natural oils’ metathesis with 1-butene.
The ethenolysis tolling run was also partially funded by a grant from the United States Soybean Board given to Elevance for metathesis of soybean oil products, which were used as feedstocks for this project.
For more information, visit: www.elevance.com
