Hunter Pilot Biorefinery Receives Go-Ahead Following Three-Year Blueprint
(New Castle Herald/Muswellbrook Chronicle) Muswellbrook will soon be home to a $30 million purpose-built biofuel facility, following a $4.6 million investment from the NSW Government.
The funding allows the construction of the Hunter Pilot Biorefinery (HPB) to go ahead on council land in Thomas Mitchell Drive, which is expected to employ up to 20 researchers and technicians, demonstrate a revolutionary process to produce fuel from crop and forest waste and assist in commercialising ethanol fuel sourced from non-food biomass.
Apace Research Limited (Apace) and Muswellbrook Shire Council welcomed the outlay, via the Growing Local Economies Fund.
Three years of work by council alongside Apace, biofuel company Ethanol Technologies Limited (Ethtec), the University of Newcastle and the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) has culminated in confirmation of the final funding component of the pilot facility.
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“We are on the cusp of being able to transform low-value biomass into high-value products such as biofuels and green chemicals.
“Being able to demonstrate these technologies at pilot plant scale is an essential step on the commercialisation pathway.”
Ethtec senior research engineer Andrew Reeves said technologies developed in the HPB over the coming years had the potential to transform the Upper Hunter into a biorenewables hub.
“A prosperous mining industry with associated areas of land requiring bioremediation presents an opportunity to grow feedstocks for a local bioeconomy,” he added.
“We have had productive discussions with local mining companies on this topic and we look forward to progressing discussions now that the funding for the HPB is in place.”
READ MORE includes VIDEO
Pilot biorefinery that produces ethanol from waste could be ‘game changer’ for farmers (ABC News)
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