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Ensyn: the joiner
This Ottawa company came up with its fast pyrolysis technology 25 years ago when oil prices were still in their teens. Ensyn stuck to its promising technology, which turns biomass like wood waste into a thick “pyrolysis oil” (or bio-oil), despite a tough energy market. Pyrolysis’ oil’s natural barbeque flavouring proved lucrative in 1989 when Ensyn commercialized its first application of its technology—for the food flavouring industry with Wisconsin-based Red Arrow.
Today its pyrolysis oil produces 30 different products. The company’s philosophy, to perfect its process and find the best partners possible to get its technology and liquid to market, never wavered. In 2005, it inked a $100 million deal to to licence the fossil fuel upgrading application of their technology to Ivanhoe Energy, which uses it to refine heavy oil from the tarsands. Ensyn’s portfolio also includes bio-based chemicals used in the construction materials manufacturing industry.
Ensyn’s pyrolysis oil is currently replacing fossil-fuels in heating and electricity applications, especially in the forest products sector where a ready supply of wood waste can seriously offset process power costs.
But what has most tongues wagging is using pyrolysis oil to produce renewable “drop-in” transportation fuels and thanks to a deal with UOP, a subsidiary of manufacturing giant, Honeywell, Ensyn just got a lot closer to the finish line. The idea here is to refine the pyrolysis oil to a state where it can be slotted into the existing oil refinery infrastructure and produce green gasoline, diesel and jel fuels.
Senior vice president, Randall Goodfellow, says Ensyn could have taken its technology to market itself but “it’s a super humongous task and there are already people who have those connections.” By sticking to its philosophy of hooking up with credible partners, Ensyn made a deal with UOP (the world’s major technology supplier to the oil refining sector), and a subsidiary of manufacturing giant, Honeywell. The two companies formed Envergent Technologies in October 2008 to increase the pace of the global deployment of Ensyn’s fast pyrolysis technology to produce pyrolysis oil for thermal and electrical applications, as well as, to commercialize the equipment to upgrade pyrolysis oil in to renewable liquid transport fuel.
Ensyn’s joint venture with UOP has gained Ensyn a worldwide sales force and a Honeywell backed guarantee on the performance of their technology.
Goodfellow says that the equipment to upgrade pyrolysis oil into green transportation fuel will be ready to be slotted into the existing fossil oil refining infrastructure by 2012.
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