As an environmental technology company, TM System Finland Oy (TM Systems) is something of an undiscovered gem in the biomass-to-energy world. Celebrating 50 years of providing industrial air solutions to optimize emissions reduction, energy efficiency, and productivity of industrial processes, the company’s heat recovery units, delivered thus far, save a whopping 10 TWh of energy annually for its clients.
Statistically, on the company’s online mega-watt-hour ticker, over 117 TWh of energy has been saved accumulatively.
With negawatts of energy efficiency being as important as mega-watts of new renewable energy capacity, what does TM Systems do, how does it do it, and how can it be applied to the broader bioenergy world?
Bioenergy International traveled to Turku, Finland to find out more.
Founded in 1974, TM Systems is in one sense a classic mechanical engineering services and manufacturing company sprung during the hey-day of Finnish base industry expansion and modernization – the forest industry, mining and metallurgy, energy industry, food- and beverages, textiles and fibre, wastewater treatment, and fertilizers.
As such the company has grown with its clients, both in Finland and internationally, to become a Group of four companies with 90 plus employees in three locations, in Finland and China, and a Group turnover in excess of EUR 23 million in 2023.
The latter depends on the year as we are very much a project-oriented business. Our deliveries range from engineering consultancy and services to complete turnkey deliveries in both greenfield and rebuild projects and we offer our customers holistic solutions from a single source. We have a number of standardized concepts for various challenges that our clients encounter, and we are also able to tailor them if the customer’s process requires it, explained Markus Hallapuro, CEO of TM Systems.
Investing in R&D and transparency
Lateral thinking would seem to be a hallmark of the company. A key metric that makes TM Systems stand out as an atypical mechanical engineering Group is its emphasis on R&D – some 7 percent of the Group’s annual turnover in 2023. This is higher than Apple (5%) and on par with IBM (7%).
The company also maintains direct contact with national research bodies such as VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, polytechnical institutions, and engineering departments at universities as well as sponsors graduates with internships and thesis work, often recruiting the students after graduation.
Indeed in 2022, TM Systems was selected as one of the top two percent of grant recipients by the EU’s European Innovation Council (EIC) Accelerator program, which supports companies in bringing innovative technologies to market.
Our technologies and services focus on supporting our customers in significantly reducing their carbon footprint through emission control and energy saving and through accelerating the rapid industrial transition from natural gas and other fossil fuels to renewable and clean energy. We simultaneously help customers increase their production efficiency and lower their overall operating costs. Our product portfolio also includes air and drying systems that are necessary to keep industrial processes running, said Markus Hallapuro.
To date, the company has six patent families on which the current product portfolio is based to show for it. No doubt more will follow. The “SuperDryer” is the latest addition to TM Systems solutions portfolio but more on that later.
At the core of our product development is emission-free, energy-efficient, and recyclable technology with a maximized lifespan for our customers. Our products are durable, and their performance is validated. The materials used in our industrial products, primarily metals, are mainly recyclable. Additionally, the products are reusable, as they can be reinstalled. They are also repairable, which extends their lifespan, said Markus Hallapuro.
In addition to adhering to ecodesign principles, the company has published its first ever sustainability report.
Through transparent reporting, we aim to engage stakeholders, including employees, investors, customers, and local communities, in our sustainability journey. Based on our 2023 carbon emissions results, our carbon emissions amount to 27 tonnes of carbon dioxide per production volume. This is something we’re working on to reduce for example by increasing the amount of recycled stainless steel in our production, as stainless steel itself is a fully recyclable material. The proportion of recycled steel varies by project, and our PLM system is being developed for monitoring these and increasing their share, said Elina Ranta, Sustainability and Marketing Specialist at TM Systems.
Heat recovery and ventilation
Many industrial processes have waste heat which can often be recovered and utilized elsewhere on site reducing the overall thermal energy demand.
TM Systems has developed various heat recovery solutions whereby heat and condensed water can be recirculated back into the process for pulp, paper, textile, mining, and mechanical wood processing industries.
A typical heat recovery unit consists of a heat exchanger, washing system, droplet separator, frame, and service platform for easy access.
Other services and solutions in the portfolio include complete machine hall ventilation systems, as well as heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) for specific spaces such as turbine halls, boiler rooms, control rooms, electrical rooms, laboratory, and special rooms.
Award-winning air emissions control and reduction
In all of the above scenarios, whether recovering waste process heat, ventilating boiler rooms or machine halls, reducing discharged airborne emissions – such as sulphureous emissions (H2S, SOx, and thiols), volatile organic compounds (VOCs), odour, visible fumes, organic- and non-organic dust – is increasingly part of the delivery brief.
The award-winning “Zero-Ex” is a self-powered emissions capture technology with energy recovery possibilities and environmental benefits.
Energy is saved by recovering heat and water from the drying process and the exhaust emissions treatment is tailored to suit the need; from scrubbing to condensing or a combination of several different technologies, while the treated and conditioned air can be circulated back into the process or purged to the atmosphere.
We believe that sustainable operations and business practices not only benefit the planet but also provide avenues for future businesses. Energy efficiency and emissions reduction go hand in hand and are a triple win bottom line benefit for any process industry, said Larri Fonsén, Sales Director at TM Systems.
He added that the Zero-Ex could prove both a cost- and environmentally efficient alternative to Regenerative Thermal Oxidizers (RTOs) typically deployed to destroy VOCs and Hazardous Air Pollutants (HAPs) in the exhaust air, highlighting an installation at a wood veneer production plant as an example.
Wood pellet production in which high-temperature dryers are used would seem to be a process that, on paper, our Zero-Ex technology ought to prove particularly advantageous over RTOs for VOCs compliance, Larri Fonsén speculated.
Pulp and paper solutions
Some solutions in the portfolio such as dryer section air systems are more specifi c to the pulp, paper, and board industry, whereas others, such as the “Hood”, and “Trimvac”, are perhaps less so and could be adapted and applied in other process industries.
In the former, a dryer section hood prevents the heat and humidity from the web drying process of a paper machine from spreading into the machine hall. Instead, it funnels this energy into the heat recovery process where it can be recovered and returned to the process.
In the latter, the trim from the paper reels is pneumatically transported in a single ribbon from the cutting point back to the pulper.
By running the system on a single fan, and removing the need to shred the trim, Trimvac minimizes energy consumption, noise, dust build-up, and service costs compared to other solutions.
Enter the SuperDryer
Naturally, TM Systems’ heat recovery, HVAC and Zero-Ex solutions can and are being applied in numerous process industries, and it doesn’t take too much imagination to think of other industrial processes in which the “Hood” or
“Trimvac” principles could be adapted and applied.
The most recent addition to the product portfolio is the SuperDryer, which according to TM Systems is “a breakthrough drying system” that makes a biomass drying process clean and energy efficient.
Designed for pulp, recycled fibres, and other fibrous sludges, the SuperDryer aims to significantly reduce energy consumption in drying processes, eliminate emissions, and achieve a net-negative carbon dioxide (CO2) impact on processes.
Organic waste or rather industrial bio-based by-products can be sustainably dried and turned into valuable products such as fertilizer or biofuel, or a recycled substitute for virgin raw materials. Combined with our recognized emission purification system, Zero-Ex, the full process can become carbon negative, explained Markus Hallapuro.
Full-scale test dryer
At the company’s R&D centre in Turku, discretely located inside an inconspicuous warehouse on an industrial estate, is a full-scale test dryer that was officially launched at the end of 2022.
Co-funded by the EU, the test dryer serves as a pilot for drying various fibre-rich biomass sources, side streams, and rejects from different industries.
It is open for anyone including presumptive clients, and university researchers who want to test dry various materials as well as test the post-dryer “pelletability” of the material in a small pelletizer.
Biomass material recycling is still in the early stages, and we don’t even know all the ways these once-discarded, now-valuable raw materials can be utilized. For instance, we have successfully dried materials from waste sludge from industries such as pulp and paper, agro-waste, mechanical wood processing, and so on, said Markus Hallapuro.
To date, more than 50 organizations have tested their materials, exposing TM Systems to potentially new markets and applications in various industries.
Closed-loop fluidized-bed
The closed-loop fluidized-bed SuperDryer works with a wide range of air temperatures (60 – 200°C) depending on the end product and can be adapted to a range of different heat source options and combinations.
The incoming feedstock is dried in an updraft-heated air stream and produces a continuous output of dried material which is then separated from the air stream using a cyclone.
An integrated Zero-Ex unit washes the exhaust air, eliminating any harmful emissions, and recaptures the latent heat of the evaporated water.
The feedstock particle size and residence time vary with material density, incoming moisture content, air temperature, and updraft velocity thus optimal drying conditions and final moisture content of the product are controlled with only a few operating parameters.
We have dried food industry side streams into valuable raw materials. This highlights another advantage of the dryer – it is a gentle drying process. The short residence time and low temperatures mean that sensitive components such as proteins remain intact, explained Aleksi Hidén, Head of the SuperDryer at TM Systems.
The latter is a case in point as TM Systems are in the commissioning stages of the company’s first commercial SuperDryer installation for which Aleksi Hidén has been in charge since the project started (which included testing at TM Systems pilot dryer).
Located close to a grain processing facility in the region, the undisclosed client will dry residual oat hulls from the grain processor in preparation for further processing to extract biomaterials such as cellulose for use in cosmetics.
The installed SuperDryer has a design capacity to dry up to 30,000 tonnes of oat hulls annually.
More on the commercial installation in a coming issue. In the meantime, one thing is clear – Golden Jubilarian TM Systems is well positioned to make a name for itself in the broader bio-energy and circular economy world.
This article was first published in Bioenergy International no. 4-2024. Note that as a magazine subscriber, you get access to the e-magazine and articles like this before the print edition reaches your desk!
