Ecopetrol wraps testing for SAF production at Cartagena refinery
State-owned Ecopetrol SA subsidiary Refinería de Cartagena SAS (Reficar) has completed pilot testing for production of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) at the operator’s 210,000-b/d refinery in the Mamonal Industrial Zone on Cartagena Bay, south of Cartagena, on Colombia’s northern coast.
Completed as of early November 2024, Reficar’s SAF industrial-scale testing—Colombia’s first ever—lasted 7 days and used a mix of palm and used cooking oils (UCO) supplied by Ecopetrol affiliate Ecodiesel Colombia SA and member companies of Colombia’s Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Tourism’s Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises Directorate, respectively, to produce 32,000 bbl of jet fuel with renewable components, Ecopetrol said.
With testing now completed, Ecopetrol said it will undertake laboratory reviews of the pilot SAF production to determine its quality and ensure compliance with international standards.
Pending a final investment decision as well as all necessary regulatory permitting for proposed upgrades to existing refinery installations to enable commercial-scale production, Ecopetrol said it aims for sustained output of SAF from Cartagena in 2028.
If approved, the operator said the Cartagena SAF project—which will support Colombia’s plan for a fair energy transition—would use a basket of organic feedstocks such as vegetable oils and UCOs, among others.
First proposed earlier this year, confirmation of the SAF testing at Cartagena follows a series of recent works Reficar has undertaken to improve environmental performance of the refinery in line with Ecopetrol’s commitment to achieve carbon neutrality of its operations related to Scopes 1 and 2 emissions of greenhouse gases by 2050 (OGJ Online, July 25, 2024).
In April at Cartagena, Ecopetrol completed construction of Latin America’s first-ever solar farm to be built inside a refinery. Located across a 19.9-hectare plot of land and consisting of 40,146 panels, Cartagena’s solar farm is equipped with a capacity of 22.1 Mw for delivery of up to 34.4 million kw-hr/year of electricity.
Scheduled to reach full design capacity this year, Reficar said the solar farm aims to reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from the refinery by 21,000 tonnes/year (tpy) once fully operational.
Other works to improve environmental performance of the Cartagena refinery include:
- Installation of pilot plants in 2023 to explore carbon capture and utilization.
- Startup in 2023 of a water neutrality project to explore the potential for completely reusing the site’s wastewater, using alternative sources such as seawater desalination, and improving technologies in the refinery’s cooling systems.
- Installation in 2022 of a pilot plant containing a 50-kw proton exchange membrane (PEM) electrolyzer and 270 solar panels for production of green hydrogen.
- Testing in 2023 for production of renewable diesel via co-processing in the refinery’s diesel hydrotreating unit.
- Planned industrial testing in 2024 for processing post-consumer plastic in the refinery’s delayed coker.
- Approval in 2023 of a project to explore potential production of petrochemicals and aromatics from naphtha and hydrogen.
These programs follow smaller works Reficar implemented between 2018 and 2023 to improve energy efficiency of the Cartagena refinery that—all focused on optimizing consumption of electricity, natural gas, and thermal energy—helped reduce the site’s CO2 emissions by 274,000 tpy, the operator said.
Robert Brelsford | Downstream Editor
Robert Brelsford joined Oil & Gas Journal in October 2013 as downstream technology editor after 8 years as a crude oil price and news reporter on spot crude transactions at the US Gulf Coast, West Coast, Canadian, and Latin American markets. He holds a BA (2000) in English from Rice University and an MS (2003) in education and social policy from Northwestern University.
