US-headed advanced renewable fuels and biochemicals company Aemetis Inc., has announced that its Universal Biofuels subsidiary in India has completed the construction of initial process equipment and has obtained regulatory approval for the production of enzymatic biodiesel at its biodiesel plant in Kakinada, India using a patent-pending process technology developed by Aemetis. The company is "well positioned" to supply into the US biodiesel market.
According to a statement, these approvals allow the use of low-cost waste oil feedstocks for the production of biodiesel using Aemetis enzymatic production processes to supply customers, primarily in the US and Europe, through a supply contract with a major oil company.
This means that the company is “well positioned” to fill an expected US biodiesel market supply gap as a result of the US Department of Commerce (DOC) anti-dumping ruling against Argentina and Indonesian biodiesel imports.
The Aemetis biorefinery in Kakinada, Andhra Pradesh has a capacity of 50 million US gallons (≈ 189 million litres) per annum of biodiesel, along with the ability to produce and supply refined glycerin to pharmaceutical and industrial customers. Aemetis also filed a patent on this proprietary pretreatment process in April 2017.
The technology enables the enzymatic processing of waste oil feedstock to biodiesel by solving the primary issue of enzymatic biodiesel production: the requirement that feedstock reach and maintain an optimal temperature that allows for maximum enzymatic activity.
Aemetis’ India subsidiary, is expected to provide biodiesel to the US market to replace a portion of the more than 400 million US gallons per annum (≈ 1.51 billion litres) of Argentina and Indonesian biodiesel imported into the US annually. The Aemetis plant is the first and only India biofuels producer approved under the Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) for delivery of tallow and waste oil derived biodiesel into California.
