Kalundborg Next

The project was to use and develop technologies from two leading industrial companies and combine the knowledge and the operating facilities in Denmark and Finland to achieve the project objectives. In the project, lignocellulose based microbial oil technology was optimized and demonstrated by combining knowhow in Inbicon's pre-treatment technology and Neste Oil's Microbial Oil Technology. Inbicon's pre-treatment technology was to be optimized to produce lignocellulosic sugars to feed the microorganisms in Neste Oil's Microbial Oil process, and the new Inbicon Version II ethanol process was to be run as a reference. As a part of the project, Inbicon's Kalundborg demonstration plant was to be retrofitted for the sugar platform for this purpose. The sugar streams produced were characterized and delivered to Neste Oil for conversion to oil by microorganisms. The performance of the microorganisms to produce oil from the lignocellulosic sugars was to be optimized. Microbial oil was further to be refined to high quality drop-in paraffinic biofuels, renewable diesel and jet-fuel, using Neste Oil's proprietary NExBTL technology.

The KANE project was kicked off in March 2014 and was to continue through Medio 2017.

Unfortunately the process of converting lignocellulosic sugars to microbialoil proved to be less cost effective than anticipated, why the project was effectively put on hold in the autumn of 2014.

Efforts to re-scope and resuscitate the project proved unsuccessful why the project was effectively terminated.