In Germany, global heavy industry major thyssenkrupp rothe erde is breaking new ground with the inauguration of what is said to be the country's largest-of-its-kind biomass carbonization plant.
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Part of Germany-headed global heavy industry major thyssenkrupp Group AG, thyssenkrupp rothe erde is the group’s engineering and manufacturing arm for rollers, bearings, rings, and drives used by global OEMs across a wide range of industries and sectors.
The company operates 15 plants across 10 countries including the Lippstadt facility in Germany where the carbonization plant has been installed.
Renewable heat and biochar
The inaugurated biomass carbonization plant at its Lippstadt site is a recognized Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) technology, whereby a share of the atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) bound in the biomass is converted to biochar and permanently stored.
Our carbonization plant is unique in terms of its size in Germany and is the first time this type of negative emission technology has been integrated into a German industrial group, said Dr Wilfried Spintig, COO at thyssenkrupp rothe erde.
In the carbonization plant, waste wood is carbonized in a pyrolysis process. This produces renewable heat and bio-charcoal, so-called biochar.
This renewable heat enables a significant reduction in the volume of fossil fuels used at the Lippstadt site.
We use the heat generated by the pyrolysis process for our production site in Lippstadt and can thus cover around 40 percent of our heating requirements on site, Dr Wilfried Spintig said.
Fruitful collaboration
The successful industrial integration of the carbonization plant has been made possible thanks to special cooperation with two compatriot companies – pyrolysis engineering and technology company PYREG GmbH, and the carbon removal start-up Novocarbo GmbH.
The former has supplied and installed the PX 1500, the latest generation of its NetZero technology while the latter is responsible for the quality assurance of the production process, distributes the biochar, and produces and markets the resulting carbon removal certificates.
thyssenkrupp rothe erde will be climate-neutral by 2050, and to achieve this we are also constantly looking for new ways to implement decarbonisation at our company. This plant is also a pilot project for us and, in our eyes, can be a building block for a meaningful jump-start on the way to decarbonisation for other industries as well, explained Dr Wilfried Spintig.
Packaging residues and green waste
In Lippstadt, unprocessed and uncontaminated wood is used as feedstock, consisting of packaging residues on the one hand and appropriately dried green waste on the other.
The decarbonization plant creates 100 percent renewable energy, and external energy only needs to be supplied to start the plant, said Jörg zu Dohna, CEO of PYREG.
This is because the carbonization process produces gases that keep the plant running auto thermally, once it has reached an operating temperature of around 700 °C.
According to Jörg zu Dohna, renewable heat is an area that receives little attention compared to renewable power.
While almost half of the energy for electricity already comes from renewable sources, the figure for heat is just two percent. In this respect, charring is a ‘double’ climate protection instrument: it creates renewable energy and permanently binds the CO2 already sequestered in the green waste in the biochar, explained Jörg zu Dohna.
Enable permanent sequestration
As the name suggests, PYREG’s PX 1500 unit has a nameplate 1.5 MWfuel capacity providing up to 600 kWth per hour of heat and 900 tonnes per annum of biochar from 3 300 tonnes of dry woodchips and 8 000 hours.
At Lippstadt, around 2 500 tonnes of residual wood will be used annually to generate more than 5.3 GWh of heat and around 640 tonnes of biochar, which will be used, among other things, as a soil conditioner in agriculture.
This means that around 1 500 tonnes of CO2 per year will be sequestered for millennia to come.
One tonne of biochar binds approximately 2.5 to 2.8 tonnes of CO2, depending on its carbon content and further use. The biochar is produced in a combustion-free process. If it is then used as a filler in building materials, for example, the CO2 ends up in a permanent carbon sink and is stored safely for thousands of years, explained Caspar von Ziegner, CEO of Novocarbo, a market leader in the biochar sector.
The biochar produced in Lippstadt is currently undergoing testing for the European Biochar Certificate (EBC), a European quality standard and control certificate.
Biochar is mainly used as a soil conditioner in agriculture, a peat substitute in the horticulture industry, or in rainwater management for blue-green infrastructure projects, Caspar von Ziegner said.
In addition, biochar can replace fossil or high-emission resources in the manufacturing industry, for example, moulded plastic parts, and floor coverings, or can be used as an aggregate in concrete for construction.
CO2 removal from the atmosphere in combination with regenerative heat production and the diverse uses of biochar are important pieces of the puzzle of our climate-neutral society of tomorrow, ended Caspar von Ziegner.
