Decarbonisation options for the Dutch vegetable oil and fat industry

Vegetable oil and fat sector in the Netherlands

In the Netherlands, the vegetable oil and fat producers include:

• ADM
• Cargill
• Bunge Loders Croklaan
• Sime Darby Unimills.

These four companies represent the larger production facilities at seven production sites. There are more production facilities, but these are smaller and do not fall under the emission trade system of the European Union (EU ETS).  The decarbonisation options may also be relevant for these facilities, but these were outside the scope of this study.

Production processes include cleaning, cracking, dehulling, threshing, conditioning, flaking, cooking, sterilisation, mechanical pressing, solvent extraction, degumming, neutralisation, bleaching, hydrogenation, desolventising and deodorisation. The relevant products include palm oil, rapeseed and sunflower oil, soybean oil and other types of oil.

Decarbonisation options

The main options for decarbonisation are membrane and enzyme technologies, together with the vertical ice condensing technology to improve energy efficiency. Furthermore, options for steam supply consist of hydrogen boilers, biogas boilers or electric boilers used to substitute natural-gas-fired steam boilers or combined heat and power (CHP) systems.