HVO and renewable diesel brokerage

This page carries a rolling news window with HVO and renewable diesel developments from public industry sources, updated continuously. For how HVO is actually quoted and what moves the price, see prices and market reads; for the feedstock side, the HVO, SAF and bionaphtha overview ties the three products together.

Chemistry, and it drives everything else. HVO is a paraffinic hydrocarbon with no oxygen in the molecule, made by hydrotreating. FAME biodiesel is an ester and does contain oxygen. That is why HVO drops straight into any diesel engine without modification while FAME is normally blended at low percentages, why HVO stores far better, and why they are sold against different standards: EN 15940 for HVO, EN 14214 for FAME. Quoting the wrong standard in an offer signals inexperience faster than almost anything else.

Yes, and by a wide margin. HVO can be produced to a cold filter plugging point well below minus twenty degrees, while FAME typically starts causing trouble somewhere between minus five and plus fifteen depending on the feedstock, which is exactly why the cold flow additive market exists on the FAME side. See additives and blending for what actually moves those numbers and, more importantly, whether your contract even allows you to move them.

Considerably longer than FAME, because there is no ester group to oxidise and it does not pick up water the same way. Suppliers quote storage lives in years rather than months, against roughly a year for conventional diesel. Treat the headline figures as supplier claims rather than guarantees and check the conditions attached, but the direction is not in dispute and it matters if you are holding stock through a season.

Every plant sets its own and the contract governs, but the shape is consistent. Phosphorus is commonly capped around 30 ppm and often much lower. Alkali and alkaline earth metals, meaning sodium, potassium, calcium and magnesium, are typically limited to roughly 10 ppm in total and often 5 or 1. Other metals such as iron and copper sit on a similar order. Silicon is tighter still, frequently a few ppm or 1. Nitrogen is more tolerant, in the hundreds of ppm. These are catalyst poisons and the damage accumulates, which is why buyers interrogate them harder than they interrogate FFA.

Because it poisons the hydrotreatment catalyst and the limits are among the tightest on the whole list, often a single ppm. The awkward part is where it comes from: antifoam agents used upstream, which nobody thinks of as contamination. It is one of the most common reasons a parcel that looked fine on paper fails at the gate, and one of the parameters most often missing from an analysis.

HVO is a hydrocarbon made by hydrotreating fats and oils; FAME is an ester made by transesterification. HVO is specified under EN 15940, has excellent cold-flow properties, long storage life and no oxidation stability or microbial growth problems, and HVO100 can be used neat in approved applications. FAME is specified under EN 14214, is normally blended, and carries seasonal cold-flow and stability constraints that HVO does not.

Neat HVO, 100 % hydrotreated vegetable oil with no fossil diesel blended in, used directly as a fuel in applications approved for it. Because it is a paraffinic hydrocarbon under EN 15940 rather than an ester, many diesel engines can run it, but the engine manufacturer's approval position is what matters to a fleet operator and should be checked rather than assumed.

Because much of the European volume is contracted forward by parties covering a legal obligation under national RED III implementations. Genuine spot availability is thinner and more seasonal than headline production capacity suggests, which puts sellers holding certified volume in a defined delivery window in a stronger position than the raw supply numbers imply.

That depends on the member state and on the feedstock. Under RED III, national implementations diverge and several markets, including the Netherlands and Germany, have moved away from multipliers. Confirm the treatment in the specific destination market for the specific feedstock rather than relying on how the market worked historically.

Cold-flow behaviour is set during production through isomerisation, and HVO can be produced to very low CFPP values, considerably lower than FAME can reach without additives or winterisation. The practical answer is that you specify the grade you need for the destination and season and the producer makes it, rather than discovering a limitation after delivery.

Used cooking oil, animal fats, POME, technical and non-food vegetable oils, and crop oils. The feedstock determines the Annex IX classification and therefore the value, which is why the first question on any HVO offer should be what it was made from and under which certification scheme.