Ceimici Novel’s approach to biodiesel production has seen the technology company’s strategic vision turn heads and ask producers to envision a future where a new molecule could disrupt the industry.
Donal Doherty, the founder of Ceimici Novel, is a former Loctite employee and senior research chemist, who developed Loctite’s most successful products. The philosophy of technical discovery, where at first no apparent need can exist, is rooted in Doherty. When Loctite offered its customers “a non-mechanical solution to a mechanical problem,” their customers-engineers and designers viewed the company’s proposals as practically heretical. ”A substance that solidifies in minutes, in the absence of air. Impossible!” It wasn’t long before Loctite became synonymous with the state-of-the-art method for bonding, sealing or locking metal parts. Doherty went on to receive Loctite’s Krieble Award for his contribution to the company’s success.
Ceimici’s novel is Doherty’s own start-up. Started in 2009, Dohertyhas spent much of its time developing and perfecting processes that continue to break the rules and defy logic. Over the past 11 years, Ceimici Novel has quietly revolutionized biodiesel production by introducing streamlined processes, embracing unconventional catalysis and showing that this much-vaunted renewable energy can be made much more cost-effectively.
Biodiesel producers face significant challenges in the coming years. The inexorable rise of renewable diesel plants has shifted the demand curve to such an extent that the price of feedstock for biodiesel production has risen dramatically. Whether your plant uses waste oil, waste cooking oil, yellow grease or tallow, the pressure to purchase quality raw materials at a cost that makes the transesterification process just as profitable increases to such an extent that something will have to give. Organic producers may have to look elsewhere.
Ceimici Novel has developed a method to reduce the FFA content in biodiesel feedstocks to less than 0.2% using glycidol. So what? Glycidol is not a widely available material, it is expensive, and the more FFAs you need to reduce, the more glycidol you need. Not so if you can make the glycidol yourself, in your own biodiesel plant. Ceimici Novel developed the technology to make glycidol, from glycerol.
Crafty biodiesel producers will be able to make glycidol by synthesizing their glycerol waste. This will allow producers to purchase FFAs of much higher concentrations at lower prices and use glycidol as the FFA reduction chemical. However, glycidol is a much more versatile molecule than being characterized as merely a means of reducing FFAs.
Glycidol is an elegant molecule and eco-friendly replacement for epichlorohydrin (ECH) with projected sales of $3.67 billion by 2027[1]. The manufacture of epoxides from glycidol involves reacting the chosen ester with glycidol at 60-70 degrees Celsius under mild vacuum (200-500 mbar) to facilitate the removal of methanol. The process is environmentally friendly with no salt production (waste disposal) or water treatment.
Investors in this technology will be well positioned to redefine the way a wide range of products are made in the future, delivering unparalleled financial, environmental and technological benefits.
”Ceimici Novel estimates gross margins of up to 65% for specialty derivatives with the added benefit of being chlorine and bisphenol-A free. The impact on the traditional fossil fuel-based industry, with its predominantly Asian hegemony, will be shattering,” said Noel Chivers, the company’s head of global sales.
Ceimici Novel seeks to increase glycidol production by partnering with suitable candidate companies in North America, Asia and Europe. The company is particularly interested in working with potential players who already bring experience in the production, marketing and distribution of biodiesel where the co-production of glycerol is an integral part of their existing strategic development and where there is motivation to break into in whole new markets. . Companies in this sector can be part of large multinational groups with extensive presence and experience in agribusiness, soybean oil, crude palm oil, used cooking oil, refined oils and coconut oil. Organizations whose business portfolio includes biodiesel plants, free fatty acid processing capacity, distribution and existing subsequent markets for glycerol would be well positioned to add value by adopting Ceimici Novel’s process for the synthesis of glycerol to glycidol.
The Ceimici Novel team is expected to showcase this technology at the upcoming Biodiesel and Renewable Energy Summit at the Fuel Ethanol Workshop in Des Moines, Iowa in mid-July. If you would like to speak to us directly beforehand, please contact us.
Christmas Chivers – Europe/Asia
Neil Rodrigues – USA/Canada/South America
[1] https://www.veh.com/product/epichlorohydrin-ech-market/
