Inventure and CPM|Crown commercialise catalyst-free biodiesel esterification technology
Inventure Renewables and CPM|Crown have announced a global partnership to commercialise SimplEster, a catalyst- and enzyme-free esterification technology for biodiesel producers, following successful deployment at Western Iowa Energy’s 45 million gallon-per-year facility in Wall Lake, Iowa.
SimplEster operates without added catalyst or enzyme, removing two of the most expensive and maintenance-heavy inputs in biodiesel manufacturing. The technology integrates directly into existing sodium methylate transesterification systems without replacement, increasing plant capacity by approximately 15 per cent whilst producing on-spec biodiesel and ensuring acid value below 0.5 mg KOH/g finished fuel.
The process is tunable to acid-value targets as low as 0.2 mg KOH/g, depending on a producer’s existing infrastructure, process, feedstocks and finished-fuel requirements. This flexibility matters for producers constrained by the 0.5 mg KOH/g acid-value threshold for finished fuel but lacking certain downstream processing equipment.
‘For years, ester production meant choosing between a catalyst or an enzyme and paying for one of them for the life of the plant,’ said Ryan Long, CEO of Inventure Renewables. ‘SimplEster does neither. At Western Iowa Energy it dropped in alongside a plant’s existing methylate system, added capacity, and vertically integrated a low-value byproduct into a finished biodiesel product, and we’re still at the table with them extending it further. Partnering with CPM|Crown lets us put that same result in front of producers worldwide, backed by an install they can go see for themselves.’
At Western Iowa Energy, the SimplEster add-on integrated into the existing sodium methylate transesterification system, increased plant capacity by approximately 15 per cent, and produced on-spec biodiesel. The facility was already processing lower-carbon-intensity feedstocks and recovering free fatty acids through conventional steam-strip distillation. SimplEster enabled WIE to capture that value internally, converting those fatty acids into on-spec biodiesel within its own process rather than selling them downstream at commodity prices.
‘We didn’t want to tear out a system that works,’ said Brad Wilson, CEO of Western Iowa Energy. ‘We’d been running lower-CI feedstocks for a while, but we were leaving value on the table every time we sold that fatty acid off. Inventure let us keep it, convert it, and get more out of the same footprint, and they stayed with us to figure out what else we can run through it. That’s a partnership, not a transaction.’
Inventure and Western Iowa Energy are now evaluating additional side streams through the SimplEster unit, including black esters recovered from the sodium methylate glycerol decanter recycle loop. The technology has demonstrated robustness across diverse feedstocks including used cooking oil, tallow, distillers’ corn oil and poultry fat.
Under the new partnership, CPM|Crown will offer SimplEster as a bolt-on to its current technology, giving producers already operating sodium methylate systems a straightforward path to greater feedstock flexibility, added capacity and more efficient conversion of lower-carbon feedstocks.
‘Inventure and CPM|Crown’s methylate technology are a natural fit, and we’ve now seen them run together in person,’ said Bill Morphew, Vice President at CPM|Crown. ‘For a producer already operating a sodium methylate system, adding SimplEster is a straightforward way to expand feedstock flexibility and capacity. Pairing it with CPM|Crown’s sodium methylate biodiesel processing technology is a strong step forward for both companies.’
The post Inventure and CPM|Crown commercialise catalyst-free biodiesel esterification technology appeared first on Biofuels International Magazine.