Hugoton Flagship Plant

Abengoa Bioenergía Nuevas Tecnologías is leading the implementation of this project. The main objective is to design, build and operate the 95-million liter commercial hybrid plant for biomass to ethanol conversion.

The specific objectives of this project are the following:

• Demonstrating the commercial viability of the biomass to ethanol conversion process.
• Verifying that the technologies developed can be adapted to current and future plants.

The subsidiary ABNT has been chosen to design, build and operate the large biorefinery demonstration plant for the DOE (US Department of Energy), whose subsidy will partly fund the project. The biorefinery plant will be located in Hugoton, Kansas, USA and will have a minimum conversion capacity of 700 t/day and will use an enzymatic hydrolysis process that will convert the biomass into ethanol, lignin and animal feed.

Milestones achieved:

• Received an award from the DOE.
• Staff hired and offices contracted for the project.
• Land and water contracts signed.
• NEPA Process completed (US Environmental Policy Law).
• Almost 100% of necessary biomass contracted.
• Simulation completed of the model for enzymatic hydrolysis and gasification.
• Process engineering package completed.
• Engineering contract awarded to the temporary consortium Abener/ Teyma.
• Emissions permit draft under review by the EPA.