Canadian Biomass • Summer 2025 • Building bio-oil capacity in Prince George

Nestled in the heart of the B.C. Northern Interior is a joint venture ready to turn the locally-produced residuals of the wood products sector into renewable fuels.

This past November, Arbios Biotech, or “Arbios,” completed the construction and commissioning of its Chuntoh Ghuna bio-oil production facility located in Prince George. The plant is designed to be able to produce 50,000 barrels of bio-oil annually, which makes it the largest HTL facility in the world. It has received funding support through the Government of British Columbia’s Initiative Agreement Program under the Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS). The facility also received support during the development stages of the project from Sustainable Development Technology Canada; the BC Innovative Clean Energy Fund; and Natural Resources Canada’s Clean Growth Program.

“Government support has been substantial, and without that, this wouldn’t have happened,” says Rune Gjessing, CEO of Arbios.

The facility was originally a joint venture between Canfor Pulp and the plant’s technology provider, Licella, that started back in 2016, where the focus was utilizing residues from pulp mills. By 2020, this concept changed along with the partnership, which is now between Canfor Corporation and Licella. The new purpose of the production facility is to use a variety of forest product residuals to produce biooil that can be further refined for various transportation applications. While the company was fine-tuning the design of the facility, it was learning more about the production process from Licella’s largescale pilot plant in Somersby, Australia.

“Improvements were being incorporated into that design concept as we were scoping the facility. At the same time, we were talking to the Lheidli T’enneh First Nation about the project, and said that we wouldn’t proceed without their support,” explains Tessa Gill, external relations lead for Arbios. “We did the feasibility study for the facility while at the same time working with the Lheidli T’enneh to see what the potential concerns and areas of interest were, before we made the final investment decision.”

“Everything we’re trying to test here, we have tested in Somersby, but that plant is also designed to test other feedstocks,” Gjessing adds. “In Prince George, we are focused on forest residuals or woody biomass.”

Arbios is testing the Chuntoh Ghuna facility using white wood chips and hog fuel, trying to find out the impact each feedstock has on the process downstream. No matter what type of biomass residuals are used, Arbios does not expect to be differentiating its final products based on the feedstock alone.

“As of now, we don’t have any data points that indicate any difference,” Gjessing says, adding that a drop-in renewable marine fuel would be an ideal first product. “That’s simply because it has the widest specs and the engines are the most tolerant.”

Longer-term, the company will produce the best value product, which is still being decided.

“Obviously, sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) has got a higher price, but it also has a higher cost to make, so we will focus what makes the most economic sense,” Gjessing says.

“Fundamentally, we’re targeting the industries that are the hardest to find a low carbon solution for – long-haul aviation, global marine transportation. It’s going to take longer for these industries to find alternative solutions,” Gill adds.

The Arbios Chuntoh Ghuna facility is targeting the production of renewable fuels that will generate up to an 80-per-cent reduction rate in carbon intensity (CI) compared to fossil fuel equivalents, which would currently give the company significant flexibility for its products to fall within regulatory requirements around the world.

The process starts with the biomass which could be sawdust, bark, or other forest residuals, being transported from the storage facility into conveyors where it is screened and sized to prepare it for processing. From there, the biomass is conveyed to a dryer to reduce moisture levels then fed into a feed bin for processing. The biomass is then transported into a supercritical mixing process where it is mixed with water under high temperature and pressure.

The mix then undergoes a process created by Licella’s proprietary Cat-HTR hydrothermal liquefaction process, which takes approximately 20 minutes to convert the biomass into bio-oil. The bio-oil and water are then separated, where water treatment and recovery takes place. The bio-oil is then ready for refining or upgrading.

The bio-oil is then collected for offsite refining into a renewable drop-in fuel for transportation applications such as marine, trucking or aviation.

While the facility is of a commercial scale, further steps will move it towards full commercialization.

“What this plant does is confirm the technology at scale, and we’re already permitted for expansion,” Gill says. “The kind of the expansion we’d be looking at is adding another process line, and there’s plenty of room for expansion on this site.”

Gjessing says successfully scaling up facilities like this one requires taking several steps or phases that are sometimes overlooked due to lack of capital, impatience, or both.

“Some technologies are easier to scale than others. This one is somewhere in the middle, but there are a lot of learning points even from Licella’s large pilot plant that is much smaller than Chuntoh Ghuna. There’s a lot of learnings between that plant and this one,” he says. “And if you went directly from a pilot plant to a much larger commercial scale, you simply wouldn’t know a lot of things that we already know.”

Scaling up too quickly becomes a major issue when reaching out to investors for the hundreds of millions of dollars required to build a commercial-sized production facility.

“For Arbios, it’s really about de-risking the plant for the next step,” Gjessing says.

Arbios has been working closely with the Lheidli T’enneh First Nation since the beginning of the project, and it is possible that one of their companies, such as LTN Contracting, could be supplying underutilized forest residuals such as slash, tops and thinnings, to supply the feedstock for the plant. Gill says there is an ongoing study taking place that is looking at the economic feasibility of having such residuals for the plant supplied by a company like LTN Contracting.

“We can’t speak for the Lheidli T’enneh, but the Nation has been very supportive and helpful, and are very engaged with the development of the plant,” Gill says.

In a recent press release published by Arbios Biotech, Lheidli T’enneh First Nation Chief Dolleen Logan stated, “As a Nation, we are focused on working with proponents and projects that focus on long-term environment sustainability. We are proud to see the completion of Chuntoh Ghuna, a facility that reflects our shared values of a sustainable bioeconomy. Further, this project demonstrates what can be achieved when Indigenous communities and industry collaborate in a meaningful way. We look forward to the positive impacts this facility will bring as we transition to a low-carbon future.”