The SAF Podcast

The SAF Podcast - Votion Biorefineries: Patience + Perseverance = Production

• SAF Investor • Season 3 • Episode 5

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 In this episode of The SAF Podcast, we dive into the evolving world of biomass-to-liquid fuels as Oscar chats with Anders Edling Hultgren, Founder of Votion Biorefineries. With nearly two decades in biofuels, Anders shares his journey from the Swedish forestry sector to pioneering innovations in bio-oil production. 

 Hultgren shares his groundbreaking approach to converting diverse biomass feedstocks—from bark and forestry residues to agricultural waste—into high-quality bio-oils suitable for hydroprocessing. 

The discussion explores critical challenges in sustainable fuel production, including the complex process of metal removal from bio-oils to ensure catalyst longevity in refinery operations. Hultgren reveals his technology's remarkable ability to liquefy nearly 100% of biomass inputs, positioning Votion as a potential game-changer in the renewable fuels landscape.

Key insights include the importance of energy independence, the potential for global biomass utilization, and the strategic approach of leveraging existing refinery infrastructure. Hultgren candidly discusses the entrepreneurial journey, emphasizing patience, perseverance, and continuous innovation as fundamental to developing transformative sustainable fuel technologies.

 This conversation also touches on the Nordic region’s leadership in biofuels, the scalability of biomass solutions, and the balancing act between technological innovation and commercial viability. 

If you enjoyed this episode check out our previous conversation with Wendy Owens, Hexas Biomass: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2202964/episodes/14544753

Oscar:

Hello and welcome to another episode of the SAF podcast. This week I'm delighted to be joined by Anders Holtgren from Votion Biorefineries, and today we're going to be having a discussion that's largely based around the role of biomass and refining biomass in the SAF space, as well as what's going on in the Nordics the groundswell of activity in the SAF and biofuel space up in the Nordic countries. What's so special in the water up there, and looking at how you approach scaling from a very small scale technology development looking to sort of scale across the globe. Anders, how are you?

Anders:

Fine, thank you.

Oscar:

Thanks for having me are you Fine, thank you, thanks for having me. Absolute pleasure, absolute pleasure. So before we get into sort of Votion and biorefineries and what you guys are doing there, do you just want to take us through your background and sort of your career up to the point where you joined Votion?

Anders:

Yeah, sure, so I'm a chemical engineer. I'm from the south of Sweden and I always liked chemistry and chemical engineering and wanted to make a difference. As long as I can remember, I always had this interest in sustainability or making the world greener, really like nature, and so I started this career in chemical engineering or in biofuels in 2006. I was at Procter Gamble for a short while. I made an internship in Brussels at the R&D center. There, procter Gamble was a fantastic employer, but it was in the wrong market, wrong sector for me, it felt like. So I wanted to work with something energy related, because I wanted to make more of a difference. So I had the fortune to join a small company in Stockholm and work with ethanol, ethanol trading, and we had an ethanol project in Latin America. It was a fantastic start of my career. So I was there for a couple of years and then I worked with biodiesel, so so rme, rapeseed methyl ester and glycerine, and also so that was in the chemical specialty chemicals company. So I had a very good time there, also um, lots of policy all the time, and so very much involved in renewable energy directive.

Anders:

Since it started it's been many years now, so right now, so it's been 19 years in biofuels for me and before I started voshen, I was more than 10 years at sca, the swedish forest company. Uh had a very good job, uh, really, I started there to develop something new. So I started from scratch, really, and we had some very big, interesting biorefinery projects going on when I resigned. That was a tough time because I had a very good job and really enjoyed it. A tough time because I had a very good job and really enjoyed it. I had an opportunity to travel around the world and see all these technologies and pyrolysis, gasification, torrefaction, steam explosion, biochemical conversion of biomass, yeast, fermentation of bacteria. I mean, I learned so much All the different types of pyrolysis processes.

Anders:

I just felt in 2021 that I wanted to make this happen on a global scale, not only here in Sweden and in the Swedish forest industry. I wanted to sort of get out and discover more. What kind of opportunities could we find? So I realized that this is sort of a good timing because I had learned a lot, and so, yeah, I thought, why not give it a try? And I had some friends that wanted to back me financially in the beginning some former managers that I worked with and entrepreneurs that I know, and they wanted to also see this happen. Just to check, can we do something? So that's how it was. So I started in January 2022 and started to develop new technologies at the same time as starting to think about different projects and potential partners and so on. So yeah, it's been three years now and we're still alive, so I think it's a good sign.

Oscar:

I think it's a good sign. And what is it that Votion's doing? What technology are you developing and what's your sort of underlying philosophy and ongoing strategy?

Anders:

Yeah, it started when I, during the last couple of years, when I was at SEA, we were thinking about producing more renewable diesel SAF, bio-nafta from different types of biomass residues, and one issue that I saw was that some so hydro processing so the HEFA process, hvo process they have, they really need a very good bio-oil. So my idea was to produce more of these bio-oils that are ready to be used in regular hydro-processing, pneumocatalyst, high temperature pressure, very standard refinery hydro treaters using the same catalyst, and so on, because I feel that that must be the most cost-effective way to get to aviation fuel, diesel, etc. Don't think the other processes have the same same opportunity, same possibility in terms of utilizing infrastructure that we already have. So, yeah, so I started working on this. So one of the problems is the metal content.

Anders:

So started in 2022 with what we call now demetallization, so removal of metals from existing bio-oils. Anything, and so we have some could be metals, also chlorine, but mainly talking phosphorus, sodium, potassium, et cetera. How do we remove those in the most cost-effective way? So that's how it started. That was the first sort of invention, patent application, and then going to the next step was okay, how can we get more, more of these bio oils and that was to break down biomass. So we started with bark.

Anders:

So the first experiment with bark was in august 2022 and we it was a fun moment because all the bark we put in came out as a liquid. So we put in bark, so from spruce and pine here in Sweden and we made liquid out of 100% of our bark and a good oil. So final boiling point of this oil was just above 600 degrees and felt like we were onto something. This could be something so cost effective way of doing it. So, yeah, this is the idea Breaking down biomass into oil and remove metals all of it. So below 10 ppm, absolutely, potentially even farther, so we can make an oil that can be used in regular standard hydro processing and what?

Oscar:

why does bioware need demetallization? Because I have to say to say I'm not a chemist, so I think everyone that listens has realized by now I'm not that hot on chemistry. So why is that an important step in the process?

Anders:

Okay. So in these fixed bed reactors you can see there's a big filter, the hydro processing, the hydro treatment. When you remove oxygen from bio oils, which is the main thing to get to hydrocarbon, you want to remove oxygen. Then you need a fixed bed and a catalyst in there. The thing with the catalyst is that you deactivate the catalyst over time if you add new metal ions to this catalyst bed. So you will sort of deactivate the catalyst and it doesn't happen directly, so it's not black or white.

Anders:

You can have some metals in your bio oil but you cannot run it as long as if you remove the metals completely. So it's about longevity. As long as if you remove the metals completely, so it's about longevity. So uptime of that reactor, you have to at some point replace that catalyst with a new, fresh catalyst. So yeah, it's about deactivation over time. So today when you make HVO, saf normally run your catalyst bed or this first reactor for half a year, one year, two years, depending on the metal content. So if we remove more of the metals we can run it for a longer time. But many of these waste bio-oils that are not being used today for HVO and SAF production can contain 200 to 400 ppm of metals, which is far beyond the 10 ppm that is the requirement. So this will not last for very long, so you could just run them for two months or so.

Oscar:

Yeah and you mentioned you. You did this, you've done bark. Currently, is that the only sort of biomass feedstock you've worked with, or have you done sort of tests with others?

Anders:

yeah, now we started with bark because it's the most challenging uh feedstock, especially in january, when all the the Christmas trees were thrown out.

Anders:

For people, that would be the time to do it Exactly when you throw out your Christmas tree. We need to take that Christmas tree and make diesel out of it. So we started with bark, because it's the challenging. It contains ash and the chemical composition of bark is very well challenging, especially here in in the northern part of the world where trees are growing for very long time. The lignin molecule is big and hard to break really, so it's easier to work with straw or something else. So we have have tried many things. We have, but mainly bark, but also lignin, sawdust, residues from agricultural residues, different forest industry waste residues, also from agriculture, from food industry, and we are teaming up with many of potential feedstock providers to add value to whatever they have. So we can use basically anything biogenic. We have tried plastic, but I can tell that polyethylene doesn't work. We melt it but it goes back again to a ball of plastic afterwards. So polyethylene, polypropylene will not work, but biogenic waste residue, all of it will work.

Oscar:

So, like people like paper mills or that sort of prime time people that you're looking at working and sort of upscaling their waste products, stuff like that, that sort of people you're looking at for your feedstock partners, that's the sort of people yeah. And.

Anders:

I'm very interested in talking to companies from different parts of the world so we can try some more exotic raw materials. So yeah, it's a lot of fun now when we have connections basically all over the world and testing things from Southeast Asia or North America, south America, europe, etc. So South America, europe, etc. So yeah, in different types of waste residue. So I think it looks well. So we have never failed to liquefy anything we put in to 100%, so we have no solids in this liquid coming out of the first reactor where we do this cooking of biomass.

Oscar:

So that means anyone listening from around the world. You have my permission to send Anders anything biomass related to see if he can process it and turn it into a liquid.

Anders:

Yes.

Oscar:

If it's something he hasn't tried before you, that's extra points.

Anders:

Yeah, and I'm open to new challenges. I hope you can send me something that you've never been able to liquefy or make some oil out of.

Oscar:

That's a dangerous statement. I'm not sure anything is the route we want to go down.

Anders:

But if it's hard there could be some mechanical issues potentially when you scale up. If it's like really hard nut shells or so, but chemically inside that reactor, I'm very positive that everything will become a liquid.

Oscar:

Yes. So what's your sort of growth strategy, for you know scaling this technology Because, as you say, you've got this reactor and you're, you know, successfully testing a lot of different feedstocks. What's your growth strategy to get towards? You know a demo plan, you know all the way down to FID commercial operations. What's that sort of timeline and strategy look like?

Anders:

Yes, no. First I wanted to say I wish I knew. I wish I knew how the future will look like. But I'm confident that working so closely with the partners, as we do today, will answer the question, because I think that we're.

Anders:

I think it's the same for every company. Really, you need to satisfy someone, because there must be someone paying for something you do right. So, working with the oil industry, fertilizer industry and all these potential feedstock suppliers, food industry, agriculture sector, etc. I think that makes a lot of sense and as long as we make them happy, I think that there is a future for us and it's all about connecting these things and making sort of consortia around it. So I think that we, uh, we're talking to all these companies and at some point we we form some kind of clusters or ecosystems around different projects.

Anders:

But we are starting in lab scale and after successful lab testing, I think we are scaling up into pilot scale. But if that's in-house I mean Votion's own pilot units or if it's with some technology supplier that we collaborate with, that I don't know yet. Supplier that we collaborate with, that I don't know yet. Um, we do have quite a few of these licensing partners could be in the future, talking to companies that hydro processing, for example, I mean, you already have a few very good providers of that technology, so we don't really need to do that ourselves. But the first step, the cooking of biomass perhaps that's something we should do and the demetallization we are talking to some potential suppliers of that piece of equipment and they can do pilot testing in their facilities and so we can scale it faster.

Oscar:

So there are a few, a few ways sort of to tackle the next steps here, but it takes longer than I anticipated You're not settled on the sort of the build own operate model versus sort of licensing technology to, or a piece of technology in the refining process to, other people.

Anders:

You're not 100 fixed on which sort of strategy, whether it would be a combination of the two going forward exactly, and I think that to make it happen is that's number one, like do it, but then the next step is what's the most cost effective way of making it happen? So, utilizing infrastructure, both upstream and downstream, makes a lot of sense. So, if you can work with the forest industry upstream, utilizing their, if they have, steam power, whatever utilities available wastewater treatment, for example that's something we shouldn't build ourselves and then downstream, if you want to make them south, or so, how many refineries do we find around the world? Can we utilize that infrastructure? Well, yes, it makes a lot of sense, because how? Yeah, you know that there are more than 800 refineries around the world and there should be someone that we can collaborate with to keep the cost like OPEX, copex lower and make this feasible and viable.

Oscar:

How does this sort of play into your ongoing investment strategy? Because if you don't have a sort of a clear idea on whether you're going to a business model of unlicensing or build, don't operate a refinery, it does that pose potentially some difficult investment discussions. Or do you think people are quite comfortable with you just saying look the proposition of our technology, this is what we're capable of doing, and then we've got the flexibility to go. We can license this to people. There's a market to license this, or there's a market for us to go down the build and operate right.

Anders:

I think that build on operate will come at some point and I want to get there. That's sort of the final goal, because I that's a dream I have to have a biorefinery on my own. But to get there, I think this journey can be. Uh, yeah, it will be a bumpy road, but starting with joint ventures or licensing, I think this is that. This is the key to to get there, and it's relatively similar if motion owns a minority stake in a joint venture or if we have some kind of royalty, license fee, innovation. So so, making it happen is number one. Exactly who owns what and how much, that's secondary. Um, number one is that we make it happen and I'm sure that motion can benefit, uh, significantly. But we need to also realize we are very small startup and only three years old. There are so many other companies out there having so much more financial muscles than we do. So, yeah, I think partnering up and working together is the way forward.

Oscar:

So, in terms of biomass feedstock, there's a big conversation one around is there enough of a certain type of biomass to be a long ongoing feedstock that can cope with demand? And then, on the other side of that, there's the question of price and whether it's a cost, competitive feed dock for production to make an end product that's actually even remotely close to what jet fuel is. Availability of biomass, if we're talking sort of you know barks or other things that you're using, and, two, the trend in terms of price that you're going to have to pay for those in sort of the short and long term. Is there enough stability there to make stable, you know, long-term business decisions, which is what investors looking particularly if you're looking build and operate down the line. They're very keen to be in place when it comes to making investments.

Anders:

Okay, small question.

Anders:

Yeah, it's a long question. I think I have three answers to it. Number one the question is good in one sense, that the oil consumption fossil crude oil consumption in the world is huge. It's so big so it's really hard to understand it. So how on earth can you replace all that oil? Okay? So here the answer is there must be multiple solutions. Okay, the bio crude that we produce will never, at least not during the next hundred years, come in anywhere near the oil consumption we have globally today.

Anders:

So we need all the solutions available. I mean to really available, I mean to really reach the climate targets. Everything is needed, and so that's more of a political way. So just promote everything, because we need everything now. And number two is feedstock availability. We should not worry too much, because as long as we can pay for feedstock, there will be feedstock.

Anders:

So if you just look at different countries separately, then there's a big question mark. Like Sweden, we have a very mature and good infrastructure how forest industry works, etc. The logistics how much bark do we have? How much logging residues could there be? But if you look at other countries where you have this what they call marginal land or barren land, you don't grow anything. If you can give incentives to farmers and forest owners to grow more biomass, I'm sure they will. So it's more of supply demand balance in some countries. Some countries are more mature, some countries haven't really started yet with they don't have forest industry, they don't have, say, agriculture with the same yield per hectare as we do in Sweden, great Britain or Germany. So there's a lot of things to do to cultivate more, grow more biomass, and then we can discuss other potential biomass sources like algae, etc.

Anders:

The other thing is what you said about maturity that we will reach a day when so let's say, we scale up this technology we're developing and right now the cost to produce one ton of this oil or SAF or renewable diesel is X. In the future, when we grow it and build larger and larger units, then potentially the cost to produce one ton will go down, and also as more the more we develop the process we have. So that's why we need to to get going and scale up, so from lab scale, pilot scale and to commercial scale, and then we get more money. We can invest that in more R&D, pilot testing etc and make it more and more efficient. So that's the idea with Votion, to never, never, stand still. We've seen the core values. We should always move ahead, so be innovative and always push for the next step and push down opex cop x. Make it better and better every time.

Oscar:

So I think that we have some a very good process here that can be scaled globally and scaled in size and yeah, so always things to do in terms of, say, pushing down cost how do you see the balance in terms of there's a lot of new technology being developed sort of for long term, whether it's across the sort of power to liquid ESAF, synthetic fuel space, whether it's about refining bio oils into bio crude more efficiently or through sort of different technological processes, versus adapting sort of more traditional known quantities like fissure troughs or and those technologies that have been around for a while, in terms of sort of getting short-term production of SAF off the ground, because we've mentioned that you know it's a long road to get from your you know lab scale to commercial operations. How do you see the balancing acts in you know pursuing these new technologies versus actually getting short-term production off the ground?

Anders:

yeah, we need, definitely need to do all of it. It's just that the existing alternatives to what ocean is developing aren't very cost-effective, if you think so fissure trops, for example, gasification of biomass. So, being cost-effective, we, first of all, we hadn't done this unless there were a lot of things done, like pyrolysis I mentioned hydrothermal liquefaction, gasification. To some extent it's inspiration, you know, and we will need new technologies like this. But before scaling up and before spending too much, we should think more about. So be a bit careful and scale up what is cost effective and can actually become profitable. But we should always spend a lot of money on this innovation and R&D, because if one technology doesn't mature and materialize in very big scale, it doesn't mean it wasn't necessary. It doesn't mean that we shouldn't do it scale. It doesn't mean it wasn't necessary. It doesn't mean that we shouldn't do it um, so um. But what I'm thinking? The logically, the best thing must be to tap into what is already existing. So when we look at our cooking of biomass, it, it looks similar to our pulp mills work. So we looking at how is the forest industry working, how is pulp mills working and on the downstream side, how, how is a refinery working. And what do they say refinery operators for? Do they say is is the most cost-effective way to to get to their final price? Because at the end of the day we need to replace those products.

Anders:

The aviation fuel is jet fuel, jet A1. So how do you get to a jet A1, that specification? How do you get to the diesel like the diesel as it is? Because then otherwise we need to build up the entire infrastructure. If you make a new fuel, or if it's electrification, whatever it is, it's very costly. So I think it's very cost effective to just change from one the same molecule, but it's a different process to get there. How do you get there and how do you make that feasible? So I think these are the questions that I'm thinking about all the time.

Oscar:

What are your thoughts on ESAF's power to liquid their sort of development and movement towards, you know, the state of the feedstock space, the amount of renewable electricity and hydrogen that can be developed. Do you think that's? Where does that fit in? What are your thoughts on how that's progressing and the role it has to play going forward? Obviously it's a sub-mandated fuel type in Europe and the UK.

Anders:

How do you mean?

Oscar:

But just you know where does that play versus? You know what you guys are doing in biomass and sort of the sort of bio-calls creating that. Is there sort of?

Anders:

I think that. So I would like, in terms of producing sustainable aviation fuel, I think the H HEFA pathway is the way forward. However, what is the HEFA pathway? And that could be a challenging thing, potentially when we're not using fatty acids anymore. But it's something similar, right, but it looks like an oil, but it's coming from, let's say, lignin or suburine or cellulose hemicellulose have reacted into something else, but it's still some kind of oil. So it's more of a similar hydroprocessing of different bio-oils. But I think that there would be some kind of evolution in terms of what is acceptable and not. And it's fine if it takes time and we can always make, so it's about making hydrocarbon really. And then how much of that would become SAF. Is it the 60% that we potentially could get from bark for, for example, or is it 20%, Because the other 40% were not good enough for that certification or specification? So we'll see how that will play out.

Oscar:

One of the big sort of benefits that people are talking about in this sort of biofuel I don't want to call it a revolution, but this regeneration of biofuels that we're seeing is the ability to become energy independent as opposed to, as you said earlier, this huge oil industry that kind of governs the world and sort of governs the global economy. The ability to sort of generate an element of in sort of independence in terms of you know the fuels you can produce for national sort of use use cases. It's a big plus for developing these fuels and whether it's you know biomass in one area or you know there's ingredients for heifer in another region, this sort of independence, both in terms of production processes and just security of of output is is a big benefit.

Anders:

I think that many countries should be very interested in Votions technology or similar technologies. How can you produce your oil within your country without depend on imports of crude oil? Many countries have refineries, but relatively few have their own, say, source of fossil crude oil. We have some countries, like where you are. You have oil in norway and in the arabic countries, in the us, but not very so in europe, for example. I mean, there should be a lot of appetite to produce your own oil domestically. So I think that this is a great opportunity that we can utilize what is growing on your land and if you need more oil, you can grow more.

Oscar:

You know, grow something that grows quicker and we just break it down to oil and we just break it down, do it and you've been doing this for, you know, about four years now with Votion. Has it been what you expected it to be, or have there been more sort of challenges and more rewards than you thought there would be when you started?

Anders:

Yeah. So you say you succeed and you learn right. So we are learning more than we succeed, probably because it's not moving ahead as I anticipated. I was very optimistic. But people that know me I was talking to some former colleagues at SCA. But people that know me, I was talking to some former colleagues at SCA. They, they were laughing because I said the same when I started SCA. Now it's 14 years ago.

Anders:

So they say, yeah, you were so optimistic when you started. You said there would be five new products being launched in a couple of years. And it was more or less the same now when I, when I started Votion yeah, we will have so many different technologies, there would be so many different technologies, there would be so many new products coming out on the market. We would make chemicals, we would make different fuels, et cetera, and we would scale up to pilot and, yeah, we'd do everything. But yeah, so I was very optimistic.

Anders:

I think that's you know, if I hadn't been optimistic, I probably had stayed where I was. I mean, I had a very good job before. So just leaving that position being general manager by Refinery, a very big and very good company, trying to do this on my own, so just to dare to do that, I think I probably had to be optimistic. But yeah, you learn. So it's patience is perhaps number one. It's the core values are changing. We have to be very patient. Things will happen. Never lose the faith that this company will become a big and great company at some point, but we don't know when. So that's what I'm telling myself often. So a lot of mental. It's like being an athlete. You know you have to train also the mental training. You have to convince yourself that you're doing the right thing and go for it.

Oscar:

Are those the sort of character traits you think are critical when you're sort of embarking on developing new technology, like this Patience, optimism, just this general belief that what you're doing will be a success in the end, whether it's on the timescale you initially imagined, who knows.

Anders:

I think so. If you listen to other entrepreneurs and people that have been involved in startups, they all say the same thing you will be close to die several times, not personally, but the company. You will face very tough challenges and you will wonder whether or not you will come out of this. So, yes, absolutely. And so, yes, absolutely. I think you have to be I don't know perseverant, stubborn, all the things you can imagine. Never give up Because it's so easy. There will be some moments when you don't think that this will ever work, but for me, it's more of some days I can feel like this Okay, am I doing the right thing? And then some days it's so fun. I mean, it's a combination, it's a mental roller coaster. So some days the sun is shining and some days not, and that affects how I feel and that then affects devotion so directly.

Oscar:

So and what? Today is the sun shining today?

Anders:

yeah, yes, uh, yeah, and yesterday especially. So it depends on meetings I have, and so if I meet some potential partners and they're very interested in something, I see the light at the end of the tunnel and that's important. So we have this demetallization demetallization of bio-oils, this demetallization of bio-oils. I have found a solution now where we can scale down and we can probably be profitable in small scale, and that's energizing when I find some technical solutions and quite often it's my ability to sit down and draw and sketch at home and calculate. You know, I make this cash flow analysis very, very often and if I get a new idea, I want to go to excel again and change the numbers and see, yeah, so see how the margin goes up and that gives energy.

Anders:

Uh, perhaps not to everyone, but that's the way I'm wired. So small wins keep you going. Exactly, yes. And also that's a good thing to celebrate often and give yourself credit and you make your decisions. And you make the decisions today that you believe are the right decisions and it's based on what you know today, so you cannot blame yourself later on that you went to the wrong direction or so you do what you believe is right and we just have to believe in it. Uh, also, in a month, half a year or so, when you know more, because you will always learn. And it's fun. It's fun, but it's also challenging, but it's fun. I think it's a combination and you never know when you wake up in the morning if you will have a very, very good day or if it would be a more challenging day.

Oscar:

I mean, I think that's an an excellent note to end on. I think there'll be a lot of people who have a lot of sympathy listening to to the position you're you're in and the emotional highs and lows of um of what you're doing. So I think think there'll be a lot of sympathy with your position. But, anders, thanks so much for joining us for that discussion.

Anders:

Well, thank you so much, Thank you.