MOSCOW (MRC) -- California-based biofuels producer Aemetis has become the latest US ethanol producer to modify its operations to produce high-grade alcohol for the hand sanitizer and disinfectant market, said Chemweek.
CEO Eric McAfee told OPIS this week that upgrades are underway at the company's Keyes, California, plant to produce 65 million gal/year of US Pharmacopeia (USP) grade alcohol by the first-quarter of 2021. A new subsidiary, Aemetis Health Products, will blend gel and liquid sanitizer for delivery in bulk as well as packaged form to customers, the company said.
McAfee in a prepared statement said the upgrades will make Aemetis "the largest producer of high-grade sanitizer alcohol in the western United States." Demand for high-grade alcohol for sanitizer production jumped earlier this year in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, leading a number of ethanol companies to expand their production of high-grade alcohol.
Green Plains last week said it had signed a deal to supply high-grade alcohol through 2021 to Reckitt Benckiser, which makes disinfectants under the Lysol brand. The deal follows a May announcement that Green Plains would provide Xerox Holdings with Food Chemical Codex-grade high-grade alcohol from its beverage ethanol plant in York, Neb. And in early June, the company signed an agreement with GE Connect for joint production of cleaning products and disinfectant.
Green Plains in July also said that it plans to install a 25-million-gal/year industrial alcohol facility at its Wood River, Neb., ethanol plant, boosting the company's annual production of high-grade alcohol at the two plants to 75 million gal/year. It is upgrading both facilities to produce USP-grade alcohol.
In addition, South Dakota-based ethanol producer POET said it plans to increase output of industrial- and beverage-grade alcohol at plants in Indiana and Ohio by a combined 70 million gal/year to help meet growing demand. In June, Archer Daniels Midland said it was "significantly boosting" output of industrial alcohol at its Clinton, Iowa, facility in order to speed efforts to produce pharmaceutical-grade, alcohol-based hand sanitizer. A number of smaller ethanol producers have announced similar projects.
Separately, McAfee told OPIS that the pandemic has delayed until early 2021 project financing for the planned construction of a 12-million-gal/year cellulosic ethanol facility in Riverbank, Calif. In February, McAfee said that the company expected to complete engineering and procurement work on the facility in time to begin construction this year. Construction is expected to take about 18 months to complete.
Earlier this year, BP said the deadly coronavirus outbreak could cut global oil demand growth by 40 per cent in 2020, putting pressure on Opec producers and Russia to curb supplies to keep prices in check.
And in September 2019, six world's major petrochemical companies in Flanders, Belgium, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, and the Netherlands (Trilateral Region) announced the creation of a consortium to jointly investigate how naphtha or gas steam crackers could be operated using renewable electricity instead of fossil fuels. The Cracker of the Future consortium, which includes BASF, Borealis, BP, LyondellBasell, SABIC and Total, aims to produce base chemicals while also significantly reducing carbon emissions. The companies agreed to invest in R&D and knowledge sharing as they assess the possibility of transitioning their base chemical production to renewable electricity.
Ethylene and propylene are feedstocks for producing polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP).
According to MRC's DataScope report, PE imports to Russia dropped in January-June 2020 by 7% year on year to 328,000 tonnes. High density polyethylene (HDPE) accounted for the main decrease in imports. At the same time, PP imports into Russia rose in the first six months of 2020 by 21% year on year to 105,300 tonnes. Propylene homopolymer (homopolymer PP) accounted for the main increase in imports.
MRC