A crucial decision has been made by Citroniq, who recently chose the site for their first of four planned bio-based polypropylene (PP) plants that will be built in the US. Citroniq is a Houston-based maker of carbon-negative materials.

These new bio-based PP plants will be created as a joint project between Citroniq and Lummus Technology, as this company recently co-founded $12 million towards the venture. This funding that the project has received will go into pushing the planning, design and construction forwards for the first ‘green PP’ plant in the Falls City.

Along with location, Citroniq has also made another major decision, which is that the company will use corn from Nebraska farms in order to produce ethanol, which will then be used to produce bio-based PP afterwards. Furthermore, the plant will become part of the Nebraska BioEconomy Initiative and the aim of this program is to strengthen Nebraska’s economy and rural communities. One way the company plans to do this, is by creating sustainable, high-paying jobs.

Now that the location has been agreed upon, the Falls City plant is on schedule to begin production in 2029 and from there it is anticipated that the plant will produce 400,000 tonnes of bio-polypropylene every year. This would mean that the new plant is the first plant in North America to have a high level of production capacity. Plus, as the mega-site is planned to be constructed in Falls City’s Mid-America Rail Campus within the state of Nebraska, the campus of the plant is planned to cover an area of 1,017 acres. Due to its size, the plane will be served by the Union Pacific railroad and it will be focused on biofuels and manufacturing projects, along with other similar projects. Finally, it has been agreed that the plant will employ the Verdene PP suite of four technologies that were all developed by Lummus. These include ethanol to ethylene technology, dimer technology, olefins conversion technology and polypropylene technology.

President of Citroniq Chemicals, Mel Badheka, commented, “Our vision is to create bio-plastics manufacturing hubs in the US Midwest that upgrade Nebraska corn into a wide range of durable plastics goods, while creating high paying manufacturing careers in rural communities. Nebraska is an ideal location for these hubs due to the availability of local ethanol feedstock, advantaged logistics to industrial plastics consumers and high-quality rail infrastructure to support the entire value chain.”

Lummus mentioned that, ‘it is the only technology provider able to supply all the proven, low-energy technologies to produce renewable green PP from biogenic ethanol.’

Citroniq added that, ‘the plant would capture and avoid 2 million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions per year.’