Hydrodec and Kobelco Eco-Solutions established Pacific Eco Refining, a joint venture that will use Hydrodecs technology in a new transformer oil rerefinery in Japan.
According to Hydrodec, specific details such as the location of the plant remain confidential while negotiations with suppliers and customers are under way. Good progress continues to be made towards the start-up of this first plant in the second half of 2012, the company stated.
The companies will begin joint operations through Pacific Eco Refining, including plant construction, commercial negotiations, and securing debt financing in Japan. Pacific Eco Refining will rerefine contaminated transformer oil to produce high grade, clean transformer oil.
Hydrodec and Kobelco originally agreed in March 2010 to use Hydrodecs technology to rerefine polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) contaminated transformer oil in Japan and other Asian countries. Japans Ministry of Environment approved Hydrodecs technology for treatment of PCB-contaminated waste oil in early 2010. We believe the potential for this technology across Asia is considerable, a Kobelco spokesman said.
Hydrodec previously estimated that the demand for treatment of low level PCB-contaminated transformer oil in Japan alone is in excess of 1 billion liters, or $1 billion in potential revenues. The companies now say the scale of Japans potential market, transformer oil selling prices and the costs of alternative disposal by incineration together produce an outlook as good or better than the previous estimate.
In October, 2008, Hydrodec began commercial production at its transformer oil rerefinery in Canton, Ohio. The 22,000 square foot plant has capacity of 8 million gallons per year. It uses a proprietary catalyst to remove impurities and produce a rerefined product the company describes as hydrogenation-refined naphthenic mineral transformer oil.