power/ energy
Finally, in very late September 2009, the Swedish energy R&D board granted $70 million to Chemrec to build the world’s first industrial-scale BioDME plant. To be built at the Domsjö Fabriker pulp mill in Örnsködsvik, Sweden, this biorefinery will produce 40 million US gallons/yr of BioDME by 2012.
In June 2008, financing was secured for the BioDME project. After extended pre-engineering, the project was given final go-ahead in March, 2009. Throughout the spring and summer the BioDME plant detail design was completed, as was procurement of long-de-livery equipment. Site activities started in September and fuel production is scheduled to start in mid-2010. Vehicle development and production was also well along, with the first trucks for fleet trials built during the summer of 2009.
BioDME production plant: Main technology providers for the DME production plant are Chemrec and Haldor Topsøe. The process steps of the pilot plant are illustrated in Fig. 2.
The gasification process step combines two
objectives – production of green liquor from black
liquor and upgrade of the organic part of the black
liquor to synthesis gas. Also primary gas cleaning and
cooling takes place here. The existing Chemrec DP- 1
gasifier plant is used for this service. It had in June
2009 accumulated 10,000 operating hours consistent-
ly producing green liquor and synthesis gas of high
quality. Carbon conversion and sulfate reduction is
near 100%. Syngas tar and methane content is very
low, eliminating the common need in biomass gasifi-
cation for secondary tar and methane reforming.
The water-gas-shift reaction is taking place at very low steam/dry-gas ratios. This favors the economics by keeping the steam consumption low but also means that there is a risk for methanation; therefore, a very selective catalyst, Topsøe SSK, is used.
The reaction rate in the downstream methanol synthesis is much increased by keeping the CO2 level fairly low, and sulfur components are poisons for the methanol catalyst. The partially shifted synthesis gas is therefore sent to an Acid Gas Removal (AGR) unit, in which not only CO2 but also the majority of sulfur
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