Innovation & Technology
Innovation and development of new technologies form important leavers for facing the challenges of our industry and our times. To ensure long-term sustainability of our business, OMV focuses its innovation efforts along the following key areas: Circular Economy, Bio-based & Sustainable Fuels, Hydrogen, and Refinery Efficiency.
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Plastics make our lives more efficient, convenient and safe. Yet, when insufficient effort is made to recover and reuse plastics, and to minimize waste, it may have adverse effects on the environment. Consequently, OMV is driven to build a circular economy which recycles plastic waste into a resource that can be used again and again.
One key effort for achieving this goal is OMV´s proprietary technology ReOil®. It converts post-consumer and post-industrial plastics to synthetic crude oil and petrochemical feedstock for virgin plastics production at Borealis. Ultimately, OMV reduces the dependence on natural resources and improves carbon intensity compared to standard crude oil processing.
OMV is the first Austrian company to verifiably produce fuels with biogenic components in a sustainable way and market them countrywide through its own filling station network. The sustainability of the applied biogenic components was rewarded with the ISCC-EU certificate demonstrating our compliance with the highest legal sustainability standards.
OMV also focuses its efforts on sustainable or so-called advanced fuels. They are not using constituents from food production and are therefore not in competition with food. Gaining advanced fuels involves mixing traditional fossil based fuels with advanced biofuels.
Click here to find out more about OMV’s efforts in bio-based and sustainable fuels, including synthetic fuels
How does hydrogen become green? By using power from renewables, water is split via a process called electrolysis.
OMV announced in February 2021 that it will invest in the construction of Austria's largest electrolysis plant together with Kommunalkredit AG. The total investment will be around EUR 25m, with OMV and Kommunalkredit each bearing half the cost. The plant is set to go into operation at the Schwechat refinery site in 2023. The project is supported by the Austrian Climate and Energy Fund and is part of the Hydrogen Initiative Energy Model Region Austria Power & Gas (WIVA P&G).
OMV’s efforts in the area of hydrogen focus on the development of a green hydrogen production and distribution that should enable a steady expansion of the H2 filling station network, but also explore possibilities for new business models to integrate green hydrogen in mobility as well as in industry.
OMV News
OMV is taking several measures to path the way for a more efficient utilization of our refineries. One concrete example is the revision of the steam turbines at the OMV refinery in Schwechat. Three of the four steam turbines are being refurbished as part of a 2019-2021 revision program During the refurbishment, the shape of the turbine blades will be replaced by modern 3D blade geometries. This is a costly undertaking, in which equipping the steam turbines with state-of-the-art blading increases the overall efficiency of the steam turbines and thus, in sum, improves their overall performance. Simply put, with less fuel input we achieve the same output measured in megawatts, i.e. electricity. This will not only increase efficiency and effectiveness, it also leads to a total of 60,000 tons of yearly CO2 savings by end of 2021.
Find out more about the refurbishment by clicking the links below.
OMV News
OMV Blog