Versalis and Elevance to jointly develop bio-chemicals from veg oils

Versalis, the chemical subsidiary of Italy-based Eni, and Elevance Renewable Sciences Inc have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to establish a strategic partnership to jointly develop and scale a new metathesis technology to produce bio-chemicals from vegetable oils.
 
Versalis and Elevance will focus on jointly developing and scaling new catalysts, leveraging the significant progress of this technology that has been already accomplished by Elevance. In addition, the partners will assess the design and construction of the first world-scale ethylene metathesis-based production that will utilise renewable oils at the Versalis Porto Marghera site in Italy. This will also take advantage of existing infrastructures and production streams.
 
The market applications of the future bio-chemicals production will be in personal care, detergents and cleaners, bio-lubricants and oilfield chemicals.
 
“The bio-based chemicals business is central to Versalis’ new industrial and business approach. The agreement with Elevance will further enhance our capability to progress in green innovation while boosting the transformation of one of our petrochemical sites into a more competitive and long-term sustainable complex, thus creating synergies between the renewable with the petrochemical industries,” said Daniele Ferrari, CEO, Versalis.
 
K’Lynne Johnson, CEO, Elevance, said, “This partnership with Versalis is a natural next step building on the commercially competitive demonstrations of molybdenum-catalysed metathesis of natural oils that we have achieved in our partnership with XIMO. Versalis is an excellent partner for this next step due to its focus on developing innovative bio-based chemicals and potential to derive future synergies from integration at its Porto Marghera site.”
 
Versalis will contribute its extensive skills in catalysis process development and engineering design scale-up and Elevance will bring proprietary know-how regarding metathesis and associated engineering with the use of vegetable oils in producing specialty chemicals for premium applications, leveraging similar projects in the US and Asia.