Foster Wheeler: Initial biomass results encouraging

Foster Wheeler AG (Zug, Switzerland; www.fwc.com), announced today that its Global Engineering and Construction Group, working with PetroAlgae Inc., (Melbourne, Fla.; www.petroalgae.com) has completed its initial testing of PetroAlgae’s biomass, with encouraging results. The biomass, produced at PetroAlgae’s micro-crop farm in the U.S., is being tested as a delayed-coker-feedstock supplement to provide renewable biofuels to the market. This biomass is renewable, carbon neutral, sustainable and lends itself readily to commercial-scale production. Testing was conducted at a state-of-the-art commercial coker testing facility operated by the College of Engineering and Natural Sciences at the University of Tulsa (Okla). The combination of PetroAlgae’s proprietary patent-pending biomass production system, and Foster Wheeler’s SYDEC delayed coking technology, is being designed with the intent to allow the delayed coker to incorporate biomass into the coker feedstock, with minimal configuration changes to an existing unit. Testing was conducted to demonstrate that the biomass is an effective add-in complement to vacuum residue coker feedstock, and does not significantly affect overall coker operations. The initial test…