Citroniq Chemicals LLC, a Houston-based maker of carbon-negative materials has picked Falls City, Neb., for the first of its four planned bio-based polypropylene plants
The site will be built in Falls City's Mid-America Rail Campus, a facility covering 1,017 acres that is served by the Union Pacific railroad, and targets biofuels and manufacturing projects.
The bio-based PP plants are a joint venture of Citroniq and Lummus Technology, which recently co-founded $12 million toward the venture. The funding is expected to enable Citroniq to further advance the planning, design and construction of its first "green PP" plant.
The Falls City plant is expected to start production in 2029 and is expected to produce 400,000 metric tons of bio-based PP per year, which would make it the first plant in North America to offer that level of production capacity.
Citroniq said it will use corn from Nebraska farms to produce ethanol and bio-based PP from that ethanol. The plant is part of the Nebraska BioEconomy Initiative, which aims to strengthen Nebraska's economy and rural communities through creation of sustainable, high-paying jobs.
"Our vision is to create bioplastics manufacturing hubs in the U.S. Midwest that upgrades Nebraska corn into a wide range of durable plastics goods, while creating high paying manufacturing careers in rural communities," said Mel Badheka, president of Citroniq Chemicals. "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."
The plant will employ the Verdene PP suite of four technologies developed by Lummus: ethanol to ethylene technology, dimer technology, olefins conversion technology and polypropylene technology.
Lummus says it is the only technology provider able to supply all the proven, low-energy technologies to produce renewable green PP from biogenic ethanol.
Citroniq said the plant would capture and avoid 2 million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions per year.