Rentech Inc. reported that it has produced thousands of gallons of liquid fuels at it’s Pilot Demonstration Unit (PDU) in Commerce City, Colorado. Rentech recently completed its first PDU production run in excess of 800 continuous hours at the facility and produced thousands of gallons of synthetic fuels including Jet A and Jet A+fuel and ultra-low sulfur diesel. All of the synthetic fuels met or exceeded specifications.

Rentech will analyze the data collected during the first production run. After the evaluations are complete, the company plans to make modifications and adjustments to the PDU to further improve catalyst activity, efficiency, yields and quality. A second production run will be conducted after the modfications are completed.

The Rentech PDU is designed to product 420 gallons per day of synthetic jet fuel, ultra-low diesel and specialty chemicals. It’s the only operating synthetic transportation fuels facility in the United States.

Rentech Inc. announced that it has successfully produced synfuels at it’s Pilot Demonstration Unit (PDU) in Denver, Colorado. Coal Gasification News had previously reported that Rentech had completed construction of it’s PDU.

Rentech’s pilot demonstration unit has a capacity to produce 420 gallons of synthetic fuel per day using Rentech’s proprietary Fischer-Tropsch technology. The PDU is currently producing synthetic fuels from syngas produced from natural gas, but the Rentech Fischer-Tropsch technology is targeted for syngas projects that gasify coal and biomass. The natural gas syngas is produced using a steam methane reforming (SMR) unit. It’s not known if Rentech will add a pilot scale gasfication unit to the PDU.

The synthetic fuels have not been tested and approved yet, but Rentech is confident that the testing will be successful. Rentech believes that the PDU provides them with valuable data that will assist them with the design of full scale commercial projects. The production of synthestic fuels from the PDU is major milestone for the company.

Rentech announced that it has completed its Pilot Demonstration Unit (PDU). The PDU is located in Commerce City, Colorado. The PDU capacity is 10 BPD of Fischer-Tropsch liquid fuels. The Rentech Fischer-Tropsch process is a proprietary Fischer-Tropsch process that converts syngas to diesel and jet fuel. The typical plant configuration includes a coal/petcoke/biomass gasification unit to produce the syngas that is the feedstock for the Rentech Fischer-Tropsch process.

The company also announced an alliance with UOP to jointly offer the companies respective technologies for commercial production of synthetic fuels and waxes. The alliance provides a one-stop solution to developers for synthetic gas conversion and product upgrading. As partners, Rentech and UOP, expect to increase their market reach and jointly offer technologies that can produce ultra-clean synthetic fuels.