Friday, January 18, 2019
VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland Ltd has developed a new technique based on gasification, which offers a sustainable way to turn forest industry byproducts, such as bark, sawdust and forestry waste, into transport fuels and chemicals. The new technique reduces carbon dioxide emissions by approximately 90% compared to fossil fuels.
The new approach uses gasification to turn biomass into intermediate products – liquid hydrocarbons, methanol or methane – in production units integrated with communal district heating plants or forest industry power plants. The intermediate products are processed further in oil refineries to make renewable fuels or chemicals.
VTT developed and piloted the new gasification process and evaluated the competitiveness of plants based on the technique in the course of a recently concluded project called BTL2030. The distributed generation process developed by the project team makes efficient use of the energy content of biomass. Approximately 55% of the energy content is turned into transport fuels and a further 20–25% can be used to provide district heating or to produce steam for industrial processes. The new technique reduces carbon dioxide emissions by approximately 90% compared to fossil fuels.
The process is based on VTT’s low-pressure, low-temperature steam gasification technology, simplified gas purification and small-scale industrial syntheses. Thanks to the small-scale approach, the heat generated by the process can be used throughout the year, and the process can be fuelled with local waste. Finland’s previous plans have involved considerably larger gasification-based diesel plants, the raw material demands of which could not have been satisfied with locally sourced waste. Moreover, it would have been impossible to make full use of the by-productheat of the large plants, and their energy efficiency would have therefore been easily less than 60%.
“Not one of the large gasification plants of more than 300 MW that have been planned for Europe has been built yet. The almost EUR 1 billion investment needed together with the risks associated with new technology has proven an insurmountable obstacle. The smaller scale of our solution makes it easier to secure funding for building the first plant based on the new technology”, explains VTT’s Senior Principal Scientist Esa Kurkela.
BTL2030 project partners: VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland Ltd, Fortum Corporation, Gasum Ltd, Helen Ltd, Kumera Corporation, Gasification Technologies Inc, Oy Brynolf Grönmark Ab, ÅF-Consult Ltd, Oy Woikoski Ab, Dasos Capital Oy, Kokkolanseudun Kehitys Oy and MOL Group from Hungary.
Main sponsor: Business Finland
Tags: ÅF-Consult Ltd, Dasos Capital Oy, Forestry, Fortum Corporation, Gasification Technologies Inc, Gasum Ltd, Helen Ltd, Kokkolanseudun Kehitys Oy, Kumera Corporation, Oy Brynolf Grönmark Ab, Oy Woikoski Ab, VTT, VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland Ltd, waste
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