TotalEnergies to grow circular feedstock processing at La Mède biorefinery

TotalEnergies SE has approved a plan to further expand processing of circular renewable feedstocks at its La Mède biorefinery at Bouches-du-Rhône in Châteauneuf-les-Martigues, near Marseille, France, in the country’s southern Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region.

During the biorefinery’s first major scheduled shutdown in 2024, the operator will undertake a €70-million project to modernize installations to enable increased processing of waste materials obtained from the circular economy, including used cooking oils (UCO) and animal fats, TotalEnergies said in late June.

Once completed, TotalEnergies said the proposed investment project will equip La Mède’s biorefinery to produce renewable fuels using up to 100% waste materials sourced from the circular economy in support of its corporate goal to reduce the carbon footprint of global operations in line with its commitment to achieve net zero emissions by 2050.

The June 28 investment decision comes as part of the company’s broader objective to ensure waste from the circular economy accounts for 75% of the feedstock it uses to produce biofuels, as well as TotalEnergies’ aim of accelerating production of renewable aviation fuels to establish itself as a leading market supplier (see below).

“Resolutely focused on low-carbon energies that are growth drivers for TotalEnergies and for the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region, [the] La Mède [platform] is an example of successful industrial reconversion,” said Bernard Pinatel, managing director of TotalEnergies’ Refining-Chemicals division.

Pinatel said the proposed new project continues the company’s ongoing transformation of the La Mède site that—beginning in 2015—involved a €340-million conversion of the site’s former 153,000-b/d conventional refinery into France’s first biorefinery, which the operator commissioned in 2019 (OGJ Online, Sept. 28, 2020).

Operable as of July 2019, the La Mède biorefinery produces 500,000-tonne/year (tpy) of renewable diesel from a variety of renewable feedstocks, including rapeseed and other vegetable oils, as well as waste feedstocks such as UCOs and animal fats procured from the circular economy, according to TotalEnergies’ website.

After ceasing processing of palm oil entirely in early 2023, TotalEnergies’ said the La Mède biorefinery’s updated 650,000-tpy feedstock supply plan from Jan. 1, 2023, would include a maximum of 450,000 tpy of vegetable oils of all kinds (excluding palm oil), with a minimum 25% of feedstock resources to come from waste and residues (excluding palm fatty acid distillate, or PFAD).

Alongside the biorefinery, TotalEnergies’ site description confirms the La Mède platform hosts:

• A flexible, multimodal 1.3-million cu m logistics and storage hub for diesel, gasoline, jet fuel, and heating oil.
• A 50,000-cu m/year plant for production of AdBlue, an additive that reduces nitrogen oxide emissions from diesel engines in trucks and passenger vehicles.
• An existing reforming unit still in operation that provides necessary hydrogen to the biorefinery and will enable production of Avgas (a fuel used in civil aviation), as well as allow the site to continue supplying the local petrochemical industry.
• A high-efficiency solar farm equipped to produce 8 Mw of electricity, or enough to meet the energy needs of a city of 13,000 people.
• An Ecoslops P2R1 unit commissioned in July 2021 that can produce up to 30,000 tpy of recycled fuels (naphtha, gasoil, fuel oil) and light bitumen from maritime transportation petroleum waste, or slops (e.g., hydrocarbon residues such as bilges).
• A test platform in partnership with Veolia Environnement SA aimed at accelerating development of microalgae cultivation via a research project that will use carbon dioxide from the atmosphere or from industrial processes to grow microalgae that—once mature—can be transformed into next-generation, low-carbon intensity biofuels (OGJ Online, July 9, 2021).

Bigger plans

Announcement of the planned La Mède investment follows TotalEnergies confirmation in mid-June that it is “investing massively” in projects that will expand the operator’s production of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) in response to increased demand from aviation customers.

From 2028, TotalEnergies will be able to produce 500,000 tpy of SAF, enough to cover the gradual increase in the European SAF blending mandate set at 6% for 2030, the operator said on June 19.

To this end, TotalEnergies confirmed it has launched multiple SAF production projects, including:

• A €400-million investment to convert its former conventional Grandpuits refining site at Seine-et-Marne near Melun, in northern France, into a zero-crude platform primarily focused on producing 210,000 tpy of SAF by 2025—with an additional 75,000 tpy to come online by 2027—from circular feedstock (animal fats, UCOs) (OGJ Online, June 7, 2023).
• A proposed project to increase SAF production 40,000 tpy by 2025 from a new plant at its 253,000-b/d integrated Normandy refining and petrochemicals platform in Gonfreville l’Orcher, France, following the plant’s start of initial SAF output in 2022 (OGJ Online, Apr. 28, 2022). In addition, following technical work carried out with its aeronautical partners, TotalEnergies said it will produce an additional 150,000 tpy of SAF by coprocessing volumes of renewable diesel produced at La Mède as soon as ASTM International approves this production method.
• The newly announced La Mède project to equip the site’s biorefinery to process 100% waste from the circular economy for additional production of biofuels and SAF via coprocessing. The operator said it already is using biodiesel produced at La Mède to manufacture SAF at the TotalEnergies’ the Oudalle plant in Seine-Maritime, France, near Le Havre.

By 2030, TotalEnergies said it plans to reach a combined SAF production capacity of 1.5 million tpy from its operations in Europe, the US, Japan, and South Korea, which would account for 10% of the global SAF market supply by that date.