With the turn of a shovel, Sweden’s King Carl XVI Gustaf broke ground September 18, 2009, at the Smurfit Kappa paper mill in Piteå, Sweden, for the world’s first black liquor biorefinery for the production of a renewable ultra low-carbon automotive fuel called BioDME.
At the core of this biorefinery is gasification technology from Chemrec and its US subsidiary, Chemrec USA. The project will demonstrate the production of an advanced diesel fuel, dimethyl ether (DME), from forest biomass over the black liquor route and also the use of this fuel in heavy vehicles in commercial service. The pulp mill-integrated BioDME biofuel demonstration project is scheduled to produce biofuels by mid-2010.
For mill owners, operators and investors – as well as for the states in which they operate – the potential
Fig. 1 - THE DME PLANT IN PITEå: IT IS SCHEDULED TO BE PRODUCING BIOFUELS IN 3Q 2010
to be transformed into high-margin biofuels producers is gaining interest nationwide. Mills as biorefiner-ies not only contribute to America’s growing trend toward energy independence, but maintain and create mill and forestry jobs, a boost to not only mills themselves but the communities in which they operate and from which they pull their employees.
With a high cetane number and with no particle formation during combustion, DME provides the opportunity to very cost efficiently meet stringent exhaust emission targets. When DME is produced from residual forestry biomass over the black liquor route, it also offers a very high reduction of fossil carbon dioxide emissions, around 95%, compared with conventional diesel fuel and it can be produced with very high conversion efficiency at relatively moderate capital cost.
This article takes an in-depth look at the evolution of Chemrec’s BioDME demonstration plant at the Smurfit Kappa mill. Phase one, Chemrec’s DP- 1 demonstration plant, produces syngas from renewable forestry biomass; it recently passed 11,000 hours of accumulated run time. In September 2009, Chemrec broke ground on phase two, known as the BioDME Project, which will produce biofuels BioDME and methanol as early as third quarter 2010.
The BioDME Project plant will be built by Chemrec with other aspects of the project to be built by consortium members: catalyst company Haldor Topsøe, truck manufacturer Volvo AB, Swedish oil company Preem, global oil giant Total, vehicle electronics provider Delphi and the technical firm Energy Technical Centre. The $40 million project – including the plant as well as vehicle, delivery and filling station development - is being funded by the Swedish Energy Agency and the EU’s Seventh Framework Programme.
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