Co-funded by the Swedish Energy Agency and coordinated by RISE Research Institutes of Sweden, Swedish Bioenergy Climate Solutions (SBCS) is a platform focusing on the internationalization of Swedish bioenergy- and biogas technologies and knowhow, from small-scale to large-scale.
The platform provides support for the assessment of technology trends, market opportunities, and collaboration partners to develop business models and opportunities outside of Sweden.
One such market opportunity is France, and for the fourth time, SBCS will have a pavilion presence at the upcoming Bio360 Expo 2024 in Nantes, showcasing Swedish technology providers across the bioenergy value chain – feedstock pre-treatment, drying, combustion, gasification, and pyrolysis, flue gas condensation and treatment, and carbon trading.
Ranging from start-ups to over a century of business, the Bio360 Expo 2024 pavilion will feature the following companies and technology providers: BKtech Group AB / WTS AB, Bio-char Technology AB, BioShare AB, Cellwood Machinery AB, Cortus Energy AB, Jord AB, Radscan AB, and AB Torkapparater.
Modular, decentralized heat plants
Specializing in assisting industries and energy providers transition from fossil fuels to bioenergy, BKtech Group / WTS is a privately held industrial group that offers both onsite conversions as well as decentralized and modular bioenergy solutions for process steam and heat based on pellets and wood powder.
References include food processing, dairies, meat processing, precast concrete, wood processing, district heating, and distilleries.
The prefabricated modular units are available in the 1-15 MW range while multifuel burner subsidiary WTS specializes in converting existing installations powered by oil, gas, or coal to wood powder.
With up to 100 MW output, a key feature is that the multifuel burners can handle (bio)fuels in all forms – solid, liquid, and gas thereby offering full flexibility. In Sweden, BKtech also offers energy as a service (EaaS) including pellet fuel supply as it operates two pellet plants with a combined annual capacity of around 60,000 tonnes.
The company has subsidiaries in Germany and France, and a wood powder burner installation in La Défense, Paris.
Bioenergy with biochar
With a team of experienced project- and process engineers, and experts, and an extensive pyrolysis- and ancillary technology OEM network, Biochar Technology is a new start-up dedicated to helping stakeholders design, engineer, build, finance, and/or operate/manage a pyrolysis process to produce biochar and bioenergy from organic residue streams with different properties for different applications such as soil improvement, additives to concrete, and biocarbon for the steel industry.
Projects range from bolt-on and/or integration with existing activities or stand-alone.
A full-service provider, which also includes assistance with product offtakes and CO2 Removal Certificate (CORC) trading, the concept is to be a “one-supplier, one interface” solution with the degree of service depending on the client’s needs and engagement.
From co-generation to poly-generation
Going from co-generation to poly-generation, combustion technology developer BioShare has developed, patented, and has patent-pending technologies for biomass-fired fluidized bed (FB) boilers to enable thermochemical co-production.
Typically, district heat- and combined heat and power (CHP) plants operate at part-load or shut down when the heat demand is low, e.g. during the summer months.
Thus, the increased utilization of these plants poses a significant opportunity for further value-creation where the heat generated in an FB boiler furnace is used for maintaining pyrolysis/gasification reactions in a coupled reactor.
In principle, any FB boiler can be retrofitted and converted to a biorefinery. These coupled reactors can be placed inside- or outside a boiler depending on the available space and the demand load window of the boiler.
As excess heat and residual streams from the downstream processes can be utilized in the combustion plant, high efficiency can be achieved with simple, robust, and cost-efficient process concepts.
A multitude of products can be co-produced, including gaseous and liquid biofuels, pyrolysis oil, and biochar.
Pre-treatment of organic waste
Cellwood Machinery is a prime example of how well-proven technologies in one industry can be transferred, adapted, and applied in another, in this case from the pulp and paper industry to anaerobic digestion plants that use organic waste from agriculture, food industries, or households.
Founded in 1913, Cellwood Machinery is a key pre-treatment technology provider in the global pulp and paper industry and a household name amongst those that use recycled fibre as feedstock.
Recycled waste paper and carton need to be dissolved and contaminant free, without trashing the fibres or contaminants, before entering the papermaking process.
Core technologies in Cellwood’s energy-efficient system for the pre-treatment of organic waste to remove stones, plastics, metals, glass, and grit with minimal fragmentation of the said contaminants include high consistency (HC) pulpers, reject separators, high-density cleaners, and deflakers.
Cellwood has supplied its organic pre-treatment system to several high-profile Nordic municipal anaerobic digestion (AD) installations.
Novel biomass pyrolysis and gasification
While there are numerous gasification technologies out on the market, Cortus Energy’s fully integrated, modular, and proprietary, ”WoodRoll” technology stands out as unique.
Consisting of three main process phases – drying, pyrolysis, and steam gasification – the WoodRoll process is feedstock flexible, scalable, energy-efficient, and produces clean syngas suitable for direct use or downstream processing into hydrogen, methane, and methanol.
Furthermore, the technology can be configured to produce European Biochar Certification (EBC) compliant biochar for metallurgical applications or produce a hydrotreated biocrude pyrolysis oil with integrated hydrogen production.
In Sweden, the company operates a 6 MW industrial plant in partnership with metal powder producer Höganäs AB and, in France is a participant in the “WoodHy” wood-to-hydrogen and liquid carbon dioxide project in Bordeaux.
C4-grasses and CDR
Founded in 2016, Jord is a Swedish carbon credit- and biomass fuel firm. ”Jord” which is the Swedish for ”earth” or ”soil”, has developed a novel model in which agroforestry is used to grow perennial C4-grasses on marginal, degraded, or abandoned land, and use these to produce solid biomass fuels, and biochar.
C4 grasses have high photosynthetic efficiency, make better use of nutrients and water, and have a high biomass yield.
The model also generates tradable multi-dimensional carbon credits that combine avoidance (biomass fuel) and removal (soil carbon sequestration, and biochar) and by deploying a franchise model is scalable.
Currently, the company has projects ongoing in the Dominican Republic (400 ha), and Senegal (70 ha).
Flue gas condensation
Heating plants that use moist fuels such as bark, logging residues, undried woodchips, or municipal solid waste (MSW) expend a share of energy contained in the fuel evaporating the moisture before the fuel is combusted.
With flue gas condensation, a technology provided by Radscan, a significant share of this energy loss can be recovered as low-grade heat suitable for applications such as district heating or dryers.
Founded in 1976, Radscan specializes in designing, building, and installing turnkey industrial flue gas condensation and condensate treatment solutions. Flue gas condensation is a process in which the flue gas is cooled below its water dew point and the heat released by the resulting water condensation is recovered while the excess condensate is removed.
According to the company, a typical energy yield from fuel can increase by about 25 percent. This translates into tangible savings in the form of reduced fuel demand, and environmental benefits as flue gas cleaning is inherent in the condensation process.
In France, the company has recently been selected to supply an economizer and flue gas condenser for a 180 MW biomass boiler at VPK Paper Normandie.
Thermal treatment of solid materials
With over 1,200 installations worldwide, Torkapparater is a well-known third-generation family-held provider of complete industrial systems for the thermal treatment – drying, cooling, pyrolysis, or gasification – of solid materials.
While the core technology is a rotary drum with indirect heat transfer i.e. the heating medium does not come in contact with the material to be treated, the company works with different principles depending on the materials to be treated, heat source, and context.
For instance, for biosolids and waste, direct-fired rotary dryers in which the hot flue gases transfer the heat to the material and also evacuate the diluted evaporated water and solvents are a well-proven and robust system, while two-step drying systems demonstrate very high thermal efficiency.
Vacuum drying for difficult materials such as industrial bio-sludges is a new development that has been demonstrated to be very effective.
Bienvenue à Nantes and to the Swedish Pavilion at Bio360 Expo (stand F16)!
