Product Demonstration Unit

Rentech's Product Demonstration Unit (PDU) is located in Commerce City, Colorado at the Rentech Energy Technology Center (RETC). We believe the PDU is the only fully-integrated synthetic transportation fuels production facility operating in the United States. This facility is designed to produce over 400 gallons per day of ultra-clean synthetic jet fuel, aviation fuel, ultra-low sulfur diesel, and specialty waxes and chemicals and is scalable for greater output.

The PDU is currently producing synthetic fuels for testing and certification purposes. Providing sample fuels for testing should progress our commercial discussions with potential licensees, customers, and those parties whose support is critical to the development of commercial scale facilities. Specialty chemicals as well as thousands of gallons of ultra-clean synthetic fuels including military jet fuel, commercial Jet A and Jet A-1 and ultra-low sulfur diesel have been produced at the PDU and have met or exceeded applicable fuel specifications.

The PDU demonstrates the successful design, construction and operation of a fully-integrated synthetic fuels and chemicals facility utilizing the Rentech Process. It represents the first time Rentech has operated an integrated facility. While operating the PDU, our catalyst demonstrated greater efficiency and yielded more product than predicted. In addition, we were able to produce a quality of syngas at the PDU that is typically created from solid feedstocks. We believe this demonstrates that the Rentech catalyst can successfully react with syngas streams from a wide variety of feedstocks including natural gas, biomass and fossil-based resources.

Rentech and ClearFuels Technology Inc. (ClearFuels) have been selected to receive up to $23 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to construct a 20 ton-per-day biomass gasifier at RETC. The gasifier will be integrated with Rentech’s PDU for the production of renewable synthetic fuels from biomass. This joint demonstration of an integrated bio-refinery will lead to the final design basis for commercial facilities that are expected to use the combined technologies.

With the installation of the ClearFuels gasifier at the facility, Rentech will expand the feedstock processing capabilities at the PDU to include both biomass and fossil resources. The PDU provides ClearFuels with the platform necessary to demonstrate its biomass conversion technology at scale.

At the PDU, we demonstrated the operation of our proprietary catalyst wax separation system at scales above the laboratory and pilot scale. In addition, significant, commercially relevant quantities of Rentech catalyst have been manufactured in cooperation with large commercial catalyst vendors to support the PDU operations.

The PDU is designed at a scale that allows us to collect engineering and performance data necessary for commercial design application. Operations to date at the PDU have verified a number of those engineering and performance criteria and we expect future operations to validate the remaining criteria for commercial design.

Going forward, we will focus on confirming and refining the design parameters of the Rentech Process during longer-term production runs as well as the effect of various operating parameters on product yields and composition. The PDU is another milestone demonstrating Rentech's commitment to success and to the viability of the Rentech Process.