Bioenergy nov dec 2106

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2016 Volume 7 • Issue 6

Cooking up a solution Improving lives through clean-burning biomass stoves

The perfect recipe Biomasses providing the right mix in Asia

Regional focus: bioenergy in Asia & Africa

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contents Bioenergy

Issue 6 • Volume 7 November/December 2016 Woodcote Media Limited Marshall House 124 Middleton Road, Morden, Surrey SM4 6RW, UK www.bioenergy-news.com MANAGING DIRECTOR Peter Patterson Tel: +44 (0)208 648 7082 peter@woodcotemedia.com EDITOR Liz Gyekye Tel: +44 (0)20 8687 4183 liz@woodcotemedia.com

Contents 2 Comment 3 News 11 Incident report 12 Plant update 14 Drawing a circle

16 Regional Focus: Africa

INTERNATIONAL SALES MANAGER George Doyle Tel: +44 (0) 203 551 5752 george@bioenergy-news.com NORTH AMERICA SALES REPRESENTATIVE Matt Weidner +1 610 486 6525 mtw@weidcom.com PRODUCTION Alison Balmer Tel: +44 (0)1673 876143 alisonbalmer@btconnect.com SUBSCRIPTION RATES £160/$270/€225 for 6 issues per year.

Contact: Lisa Lee Tel: +44 (0)20 8687 4160 Fax: +44 (0)20 8687 4130 marketing@woodcotemedia.com Follow us on Twitter: @BioenergyInfo Join the discussion on the Bioenergy Insight LinkedIn page

No part of this publication may be reproduced or stored in any form by any mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording or other means without the prior written consent of the publisher. Whilst the information and articles in Bioenergy Insight are published in good faith and every effort is made to check accuracy, readers should verify facts and statements direct with official sources before acting on them as the publisher can accept no responsibility in this respect.

Any opinions expressed in this magazine should not be construed as those of the publisher.

ISSN 2046-2476

Bioenergy Insight

A Ugandan company takes the frontline in the fight against deforestation and emissions

18 Cooking up a solution

DEPUTY EDITOR Ilari Kauppila Tel: +44 (0)20 8687 4146 ilari@woodcotemedia.com

From tapioca pulp to fertiliser through power production

Improving lives and the environment in the developing world through clean-burning biomass stoves

22 Tapping the untapped

Putting the large amounts of biological waste in Africa to good use can help turn the tide that threatens to wipe out the continent’s forests

24 Regional Focus: Asia

An Indian company has developed an innovative business model of biomass aggregation, processing and supply that also boosts rural economies

26 Big Interview

Bioenergy Insight catches up with UK-based managing director of Forest Fuels

28 The perfect recipe

Making use of the multiple biomasses in Asia could give the continent’s biogas industry a significant boost

32 The modern pollution problem

How agricultural producers can turn the massive amounts of manure from their farms into green energy — and profit

34 Questionable emissions 36 Setting the standards

European researchers aim for a joint methane emission guideline

38 A breath of fresh air

Activated carbon filtration system can help prevent odour issues at waste processing plants

39 Sweden can be a world-leading bioeconomy

Opinion piece from Svebio

40 Unlocking an industry

New trends and developments in bio-based chemicals NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2016 Volume 7 • Issue 6

42 To fuel the future

Advanced catalysis technologies will help bring renewable energy production to the next level

Cooking up a solution Improving lives through clean-burning biomass stoves

The perfect recipe Biomasses providing the right mix in Asia

44 Shocking power

A new technology resolves fouling issues in biomass plants

46 Bringing it back to the fields

The global nutrient recovery market is definitely not going in circles — the problem is that it should

Regional focus: bioenergy in Asia & Africa

Front cover image courtesy of Bigstock. ©Wavebreak Media Ltd

November/December 2016 • 1

Bioenergy comment

What a difference a year makes

T

Liz Gyekye Editor

he Industrial Revolution marked a major turning point in history and almost every aspect of daily life was influenced in some way. In the days when coal was the catalyst of the Industrial Revolution, few of those who worked with the material from the ground would have imagined that it would one day be dwarfed by renewable energy. It has been a long time coming, but a report from the International Energy Agency (IEA), released in October, maintained that 2015 was the first time growth in renewable sources of energy finally eclipsed new coal power capacity.

The report highlighted that renewable capacity reached a record 153GW in 2015, more than half of new world power capacity worldwide, and 15% more than the previous year.

While new renewables expansion is primarily focused on wind and solar, by far the biggest existing renewable source remained hydropower. Some 61% of installed renewable capacity and 71% of renewable power output came from hydroelectric sources, according to the IEA. However, wind power accounted for 15% of renewable output, bioenergy 8% and solar just 4%.

At this stage, it is the capacity to generate power that has overtaken coal, rather than the amount of electricity actually produced.

Nevertheless, this is an amazing development!

“We are witnessing a transformation of

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2 • November/December 2016

global power markets led by renewables and, as is the case with other fields, the centre of gravity for renewable growth is moving to emerging markets,” IEA executive director Fatih Birol said in a release. “The IEA will be working with governments around the world to maximise the deployment of renewables in coming years.”

There is a transformation happening in the developing world as well. Nearly three billion people in developing countries still cook on open fires or cookstoves using biomass fuel such as wood, charcoal, dung and agri-wastes. Gathering fuel can also be a time-consuming and dangerous task.

Many companies are coming up with innovative methods to turn agricultural waste into clean biomass energy. Materials such as coffee husks, corn cobs, ground nut shells, sugarcane waste, and rice husks are being used to make clean and affordable briquettes. This helps to tackle the issue of rampant deforestation from wood fuel usage and helps cut down on air pollution from open fires. In this issue, we look at how social enterprises and companies are working together to tackles these problems. It seems like a green revolution is already taking place!

Best wishes, Liz

Join 1,800 followers of Bioenergy Insight at @bioenergyinfo

Bioenergy Insight

xxxxxx Bioenergy

biomass news Call for sector to seize green opportunities

Her comments were made at the European Biogas Association’s conference in Ghent, Belgium, which took place in October. She also warned that the bioenergy sector needed to make biogas and biomethane “more visible” in the low-carbon economy.

Speaking to Bioenergy Insight at the sidelines of the conference, Donnelly

said: “Bioenergy, biogas and biomethane are clearly solutions that are relevant for our decarbonisation agenda. They are particularly relevant in areas such as heating and cooling, which use around 50% of our (EU) energy today. Bioenergy’s role here is hugely important.

“Bioenergy also has a significant role in transport.

Transport takes up about one third of our energy consumption. Bioenergy is also relevant to the electricity sector where it is already playing an important role.”

Donnelly also said that bioenergy would contribute to Europe’s renewable energy agenda for the long-haul.

She added: “I think it is absolutely essential that we get our sustainability criteria clear, in place and operating successfully. I think we should also assuage any concerns

India’s Punjab highlights benefits of biomass future The state of Punjab in India has the potential to generate 2GW of electrical power from biomass alone, a state secretary said.

According to Anirudh Tewari, principal secretary for industries, commerce, and renewable energy in the Government of Punjab, biomass is an important part of the northern Indian state’s energy market.

“One area of renewable energy which Punjab is concentrating on is biomass,” Tewari told The Economic Times.

“We recently developed 150MW of projects on

Bioenergy Insight

biomass but we have potential to generate about 2,000MW. That is the kind of biomass available.”

Currently, the states of Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, and Uttar Pradesh lead the country’s bioenergy industry in terms of total megawatts of commissioned power and cogeneration projects.

“We need to diversify.

We need to make sure we are not only focusing on wind and solar in Rajasthan.

We need to also to look at small hydro in Uttrakhand and Himachal. We need to look at biomass in Punjab and Haryana. That is the kind of mix that we need to develop,” Tewari said. l

Marie Donnelly, director for renewables at the European Commission

that stakeholders or NGOs have over the sustainability criteria. We should also bring on investments and support those investments.

That will be needed to deliver the ultimate volumes we will need.”

Elsewhere, during her presentation at the

©Politico.eu

The bioenergy sector should seize the opportunity to contribute more to the heating and cooling industries to help drive Europe towards a low-carbon economy, said Marie Donnelly, director for renewables at the European Commission.

conference, Donnelly said that agricultural and organic waste had a significant role to play in bioenergy’s longterm future. She added that the post-2020 Renewables Energy Directive was due out by the end of the year and bioenergy would feature prominently in it. l

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November/December 2016 • 3

biomass news

Biomass co-firing to help diversion away from coal

Biomass co-firing is a “must” for resolving the global dependency on coal, according to a new report by the international consulting company Pöyry.

Despite growing climate change concerns, global demand

for coal has almost doubled since the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, the report stated.

The report highlighted that the future role of coal in the global energy mix must include co-firing with biomass and a renewed focus on carbon capture and storage (CCS).

The report includes four options for resolving the coal conundrum — replacing coal

with alternatives, improving plant efficiencies, switching to lower carbon fuel including biomass, and CCS — but states that all four will be needed.

Pöyry analysis has developed a retirement profile for existing global coal capacity, revealing that without radical change, it is likely that the majority of coal-fired generation capacity will be with the most

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countries for the foreseeable future, with the projection indicating around 1,300GW still in operation by 2040.

The Pöyry projection does not factor the several hundred GW of new coal, which is under construction around the world and the many more GW that are still in planning.

‘Sleep walking’ Matt Brown, VP at Pöyry Management Consulting, said the company’s research has revealed a situation where “we risk sleep walking” into the mid-century having not addressed the challenges posed by coal to the environment.

“As world leaders gathered at COP21, there was an implied commitment to reach net-zero emissions by 2050. Without significant change, that commitment may be difficult to meet with the retirement portfolio we are projecting for coal,” Brown added.

“Sadly on CCS, we are in need of urgent practical progress when it comes to the appraisal and development of CO2 storage sites and the economic model that makes costly CCS plants competitive with their carbonemitting counterparts.”

The cost of power and industrial products created at CCS-enabled sites will be significantly greater than at sites that simply emit the carbon, a situation which Pöyry sees as remaining so long as the direct or indirect cost of emitting carbon stays low.

Such a situation is exemplified in the US, where the CCS is an established industry, but only in areas where CO2 has value.

Increasing the speed of CCS development is, according to the report, therefore necessary, as burning biomass in the existing coal fleet is only part of the answer. l

Bioenergy Insight

biomass news

Japan biomass giant to build new plants Japanese power supplier eRex’s plans to construct two new power plants by 2020 are set to make the company Japan’s largest biomass power producer.

The plants will be built in Okinawa and another location in western Japan under a recently compiled mediumterm business plan, the Nikkei Asian Review newspaper reported.

Construction is projected to begin around mid-2017 and will cost an estimated 50 billion yen (€435 million).

Each facility will have a capacity of around 75,000kW, which will bring the total capacity of eRex’s six biomass plants in service or under construction to 370,000kW. The plants will be fuelled by palm kernel shells and similar waste feedstocks imported by eRex. The generated electricity will be sold to big-name utilities via the feed-in-tariff system or used to supply eRex’s own retail power business.

An eRex biomass plant in Kochi, southwest of Kobe, is up and running and plants in three other locations are under construction.

The four facilities will generate

a total of about 220,000kW of power by 2019, according to the company.

One of these, a Fukuoka Prefecture plant being built with an affiliate of Kyushu Electric Power, is the first biomass facility in Japan to employ project finance.

Biomass power is quickly becoming a popular energy option in Japan as the country shifts away from nuclear power after the Fukushima disaster. l

www.di-piu.com info@di-piu.com

Japanese power supplier eRex is planning to build new plants in Okinawa

Finnvera provides funding boost to Teesside biomass plant Finland’s export credit agency Finnvera will contribute £100 million (€120m) to the funding of the planned Teesside biomass plant in the UK.

Finnvera is the second Finnish player pitching into the project, as the circulating fluidised bed boiler and the flue gas cleaning system are delivered

by Finland-based engineering firm Amec Foster Wheeler Energia.

The construction of the world’s largest biomass plant is estimated to cost approximately £650 million and preliminary construction work for the MGT Teesside plant will begin within the next few months.

Commercial operations are due to start during the first quarter of 2020 at the 299MW power plant, which will be fuelled solely by

Bioenergy Insight

clean wood pellets and chips.

“We’re glad of this opportunity to contribute to the export of Finnish renewable energy technology. Finland has solid expertise in this type of renewable energy technology.

Elsewhere in the world — surprisingly — it is still often perceived as something new,” said Tuukka Andersén, VP and head of underwriting at Finnvera.

“Finnvera’s participation in the project enabled long-term financing of 15 years. This is a key factor if a project of this type is to succeed,” he added.

Jaakko Riiali, VP of commercial operations at Amec Foster Wheeler Energia, sees the project as a good bridgehead for large biomass boilers of the power company class in Central Europe.

He said that Finnvera’s includsion in the financial arragements gave stability to the negotiations and made it easier to get project financing. l

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November/December 2016 • 5

biogas news Lockheed Martin opens advanced plant in New York Global security and aerospace company Lockheed Martin has opened a new bioenergy facility in Owego, New York, using Concord Blue’s advanced technology that will convert waste into clean, renewable energy.

Prior to ribbon cutting, Lockheed Martin successfully demonstrated the end-toend capability of the new system.

The demonstration validated its ability to convert waste material into energy for the company’s Owego operations, where it designs and builds space-flight hardware, military helicopters, and fixed-wing aircraft.

“This new bioenergy technology can

Lockheed Martin ribbon cutting ceremony change the way our world addresses clean energy and waste management challenges,” said Frank Armijo, VP of Lockheed Martin Energy.

“At our bioenergy facility in Owego, we’re able to reduce our own energy costs while also demonstrating the groundbreaking capability of our technology to potential users.”

This self-sustaining system can

transform waste into electricity through a process called advanced gasification with four key steps including waste collection, waste conditioning, gas creation and power generation.

Unlike incineration, the process is oxygen-free and flame-free, which means no harmful by-products are produced, emissions are limited, and waste going to landfills is greatly reduced, the company said.

Building off experience gained during development of the Owego facility, Lockheed Martin and Concord Blue recently began construction on a bioenergy plant in Herten, Germany.

The facility will convert 50,000 tonnes of feedstock per year into 5MW of energy output, enough to power about 5,000 local homes and businesses. l

Apple and Aarhus University to develop biogas production for data centres

US technology giant Apple has entered into an agreement with the University of Aarhus in Denmark to establish a biogas research and development programme.

The venture, along with a €1.7 billion investment, comes after Apple in February 2015 announced it was planning to build two data centres powered entirely by renewable energy in Europe.

The facilities will be built in Athenry, Ireland, and the town of Foulum in Denmark, where Aarhus University’s agricultural research facilities are located.

“This is a clearly a benefit of Apple’s billionkrona investment in the data centre in Foulum.

This partnership is a good example of how our targeted efforts to attract foreign companies to Denmark are producing results,” said Denmark’s Foreign Minister Kristin Jensen.

Apple will provide financial support to the university’s research into biogas and how usable energy can be extracted from agriculture, whether in the form of fertiliser or straw supplied by local farmers.

Apple CEO Tim Cook described the investment as “significant” and “Apple’s biggest project in Europe” in 2015 when the data centre programme was announced. l

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Bioenergy Insight

biogas/biomass news

Chinese firm to build biomass facility in Guinea-Bissau The government of the West Africa-based country of Guinea-Bissau has signed an agreement with Chinese firm Shenyang Lan Sa Trading Co. for the construction of a biomass power plant to supply energy to the cities of Bissau and Mansoa in the centre of the country.

According to news reports on Machuhub.com, Xuguang Li, president of Shenyang Lan Sa Trading Co., signed the contract.

Shenyang Lan Sa Trading Co. will produce an “unspecified amount of rice” for food production and the rest of the rice will be used to feed the plant (around 33%), according to the news report.

According to Li, the signing of this memorandum is the culmination of five years of studies conducted by his company on the feasibility of the project.

The Minister of Agriculture, Rui Nene Djata said the

Guinea-Bissau is hoping to boost its biomass power after signing a new contract with a Chinese firm deal comes in response to a call by the President of the Republic José Mario Vaz to intensify rice production to ensure food self-sufficiency in Guinea-Bissau. l

Hoosier Energy launches US landfill gas-to-electricity project in the state of Illinois Power firm Hoosier Energy has started up its latest landfill methane generation facility in Illinois, US. The station is located at waste management firm Advance Disposal’s landfill in Rockford, Illinois.

The engines are presently being tested and synched to Hoosier’s grid. As Bioenergy Insight went to press, the company said that it expected to be producing power into the grid by end November.

The 16MW Orchard Hills Generation Station is able to convert landfill gas into electricity.

“Orchard Hills plays an important role for renewable energy in Hoosier Energy’s future, along with continued reliance on coal and natural gas,” said Rob Horton, Hoosier Energy’s VP of Power Production, during the ribbon cutting ceremonies. “We look forward to producing a lot of renewable energy here for many years to come.”

Bioenergy Insight

The new facility turns landfill gas into electricity and in the process removes a potent greenhouse gas. The facility is powered by six 620 General Electric Jenbacher reciprocating engines, which burn the methane, causing it to combust. The process

rotates the generators to create the electricity.

A spokeswoman for Hoosier Energy notes that each engine, which has been designed specifically for landfill gas combustion, is outfitted with 20 six-litre cylinders, two turbos and

a crankcase recirculation system. The cylinder heads use pre-ignition chambers, reducing the need for gas compression and providing additional plant efficiency.

Each generator produces 2.7MW of electric power at 4,160 volts. l

November/December 2016 • 7

wood pellet news

Drax Biomass inks forest protection agreement US-based pellet producer Drax Biomass (DBI) has signed an agreement declaring the cypress and tupelo stands found in forested wetlands, including the Atchafalaya Basin, to be off-limits for its timber purchases.

Atchafalaya Basin is based in the Southeast of the US and is a popular destination for boaters, fishermen, and migratory birds.

The Basin, noted for its magnificent cypress-tupelo swamps, has also been eyed by logging operations, some illegal, for mulch and lately for wood pellets.

A collaborative effort between the bioenergy company and Atchafalaya Basinkeeper (ABK), a nonprofit organisation dedicated to protecting and restoring the area’s ecosystems, aims to provide greater protection

for these and other valuable forested wetlands.

DBI and ABK initiated the effort after company officials were alerted to the Basin’s unique ecological value by Basinkeeper Dean Wilson.

In the months that followed, the two organisations worked together to agree on a set of sourcing practices that will strengthen environmental protection and promote sustainable use of forest resources.

By committing to these sourcing practices, DBI and ABK hope to encourage other bioenergy companies to follow suit.

“The irreplaceable cypress and tupelo stands are far more precious as habitat than as

timber,” said DBI president and CEO Pete Madden.

“Drax Biomass is committed to sustainable procurement practices, and we believe this commitment should extend to the protection of ecosystems such as the Atchafalaya Basin.”

Working with Catahoulabased ABK, DBI adopted the sourcing principles that it hopes will become standard industry best practices.

ABK has been concerned about logging in wetland forests and the activity’s impact on the sensitive biomes.

“The commitment by Drax Biomass to do business in a way that protects Louisiana’s natural forests and wetlands sets an unprecedented sustainable standard for the natural

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forestry resources industry in our state,” said Wilson.

“This is a great example of how softwood-based forestry can be compatible with the imperative to protect cypresstupelo swamps, the Atchafalaya Basin, and other ecosystems.”

‘Room for improvement’ ABK also worries that, as the forestry industry sees more demand from a recovering economy, some natural forests could be harvested and replanted as managed pine plantations, reducing biodiversity in the state.

DBI committed to use southern yellow pine as the primary source material at its pellet manufacturing facilities in Bastrop, Louisiana, and Gloster, Mississippi.

Drax also committed to not source material from land that is being converted from natural hardwood forest to plantation, or from land that has undergone such conversion since 2008.

DBI does not operate its own timberlands and sources thinnings and other low-grade wood from landowners within a 70-mile radius of the two plants.

The sourced material also includes wood chips and other residuals from local sawmills.

The vast majority of DBI’s feedstock will be comprised of southern yellow pine, although some hardwood fibre may occasionally enter the supply chain.

“Our landowners and suppliers have a long history of practicing sustainable forest management, and they take great pride in the stewardship of the environment,” Madden said.

“Nonetheless, our industry has room for improvement, and so I hope our commitments to ABK will encourage others in the bioenergy industry and broader forestry sector to seek out similar opportunities for collaboration.” l

Bioenergy Insight

biomass news

Viridis Energy sells Okanagan Wood Pellet to American Biomass Corp.

Dong Energy backs wood pellets for Studstrup plant

Canada-based wood pellet producer Viridis Energy has sold its subsidiary Okanagan Wood Pellet to American Biomass Corp., a wood pellet distribution specialist.

Denmark-headquarted Dong Energy has announced that it has converted one unit of its Studstrup power plant in Aarhus to run on wood pellets instead of coal, while the second unit will be mothballed, helping to reduce carbon emissions.

The sale includes all international trademarks, domain names, and other assets associated with the brand. The purchase,

by New Hampshire-based American Biomass Corp. is on an earn-out basis and will depend on the volume sold in the year following closing.

“Okanagan Pellets have been extremely popular with our retailers and consumers alike,” said Christopher Robertson, CEO of Viridis Energy. “We are very pleased that American Biomass can now build on that history with the successful transition of Okanagan to them.”

David Nydam, CEO of American Biomass added: “We are excited to add the Okanagan Wood Pellet brand for our wholesale customers. Okanagan is one of the highest quality brands in New England with tremendous brand loyalty from both retailers and consumers. We are proud to be able to provide these super premium pellets to the retailers throughout New England and beyond.”

American Biomass will begin offering these softwood pellets to retailers immediately, just in time for the peak demand in wood pellets. Viridis is comprised of the subsidiaries Okanagan Pellet, Scotia Atlantic Biomass and trading arm Viridis Merchants. l

The conversion would allow Denmark’s second-largest city to reduce emissions by 310,000 tonnes annually as it seeks to become carbon-neutral by 2030, the company said in a statement.

The 360MW capacity unit will be able to supply heating to more than 100,000 Danish homes and electricity to around 230,000 homes using biomass.

The second unit of a similar size, which has been running on coal, will be put on reserve, meaning that it could be activated within a month, a spokesman told Reuters.

“We will be able to use it again, if we need,” he added. l

Logistec opens new wood pellet and biomass cargo warehouses in US Logistec Corp., a marine and environmental services provider, has opened its bulk biomass pellet warehouses in Brunswick, Georgia.

The modern buildings are a part of Logistec’s commitment to upgrade and expand its dry bulk facilities at Marine Port Terminals.

“With the addition of these warehouses, we have substantially increased our throughput capacity,” said Madeleine Paquin, president and CEO of Logistec.

“Logistec’s modern, specialised terminal is ideally suited to biomass cargo handling, and we look forward to working with the Georgia Ports Authority and our customers to meet longterm growth demands.”

Logistec has been operating in Brunswick since 1998 and, in 2011, began an extensive development project to completely rebuild and modernise the site. l

Bioenergy Insight

November/December 2016 • 9

Bioenergy incident report A summary of the recent major explosions, fires and leaks in the bioenergy industry Date

Location

Company

Incident information

23/10/2016

Southampton, UK

Sainsbury’s

Shoppers were forced to evacuate a Sainsbury’s supermarket in the Southampton suburb of Portswood when a fire broke out in a biomass boiler in the delivery area behind the store.

The store reopened shortly after fire crews put the blaze out.

12/10/2016

Reading, UK

N/A

A truck carrying biomass fell over onto its side and closed the M4 motorway in the UK for 17 hours after hitting a lane separator.

In addition to the biomass, diesel fuel spilled from the vehicle ruining the road surface, which will have to be repaved.

The driver was taken to a hospital with what were reported as “serious head injuries”.

11/10/2016

California, US

Blue Lake Power

The US Federal District Court in San Francisco has issued an order allowing the Native American Blue Lake Rancheria Tribe to intervene in the Clean Air Act enforcement case currently pending against the Blue Lake Power biomass facility.

The Lake Rancheria Tribe has been opposed to any restart of the facility because of significant air pollution impacts on the Tribe’s members and the surrounding area.

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green page The green Victorian

by Ilari Kauppila Biomass aided a UK hotel’s journey to carbon neutrality and brought it a nomination for the most sustainable hotel of the year Everybody knows of the film industry’s Oscar awards, but few have heard that an equivalent can be found in the world of hospitality.

The prestigious Caterer and Hotelkeeper awards, or The Cateys, have been handed out to outstanding chefs and restaurants since 1984. Among the winners are such famous names as Gordon Ramsay and Heston Blumenthal.

In 2007, a spin-off event called The Hotel Cathays was launched. These awards are — as one might deduce from the name — handed out to hotels that excel in one of many award categories. One of the Hotel Cathay awards is a title given to the Sustainable Hotel of the Year. In this year’s Hotel Cathays 2016, four hotels have been shortlisted to compete for the honour of being called the most sustainable. One of them, competing against such a big name as The Ritz London, is Appleby Manor.

Appleby Manor Country House Hotel was originally built in

1871 in Appleby, Cumbria, UK. Back in those days, the building was known as Garbridge House, a private residence. Converted into a hotel in the 1940s, the Manor was purchased by the Dunbobbin family who still owns it in September 2000.

They started a refurbishment programme that saw the hotel upgraded to a four-star status in 2007.

Going green Part of the Manor’s refurbishment has been the extensive amount of green technology installed into it that has now culminated in being nominated for the sustainability award. Among the solutions incorporated to bring guests clean and renewable comfort are a borehole that supplies water both to the rooms and the luxurious spa, a voltage optimiser to cut electricity consumption, and electric car charging ports. As the crown jewel, a 200kW biomass boiler supplies heat to keep everybody warm and cosy.

“We’ve always wanted to minimise our impact on the environment. We installed the biomass boiler about four years ago when the first government subsidies came around,” says Michael Dunbobbin, managing director at Appleby Manor.

“It’s proved excellent for our purposes. Ours a Victorian

Appleby Manor’s luxury spa’s pool is heated by carbon-neutral energy

Bioenergy Insight

hotel, so there are a lot of the original cast iron radiators from the Victorian period.”

For these kinds of radiators, Dunbobbin explains, a biomass boiler is an ideal solution. The biomass produces more heat than a central heating system, bringing the water circulating throughout the radiators up to 80°C. “The cast iron warms up unbelievably well with this system. It reacts better to that sort of heat rather than to the 60-65°C heat you get from natural gas,” he says.

The boiler was initially installed as what Dunbobbin calls a “cost exercise” in that it had to pay for itself and be cost-efficient. After working out the costs, Michael Dunbobbin and his wife Angela found that payback period was only four-and-half to five years. This made the installation a “very sensible thing” to do.

Neutral with carbon The wood chips firing the boiler are sourced locally.

Appleby Manor has a supplier who acquires all his wood from local providers in Cumbria, among them A.W. Jenkinson Forest Products. Despite the 1.53 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions the boiler produces annually, Appleby Manor is still one of the few hotels in the UK that can boast about being carbon neutral.

“When we started our journey towards green power four years ago, we never thought we would become carbon neutral.

It’s an old Victorian building, and you tend to think carbon neutrality is unobtainable for something this old,” Dunbobbin reminisces.

Yet, after an internal audit carried out by UK Green Tourism Business Scheme, the Dunbobbins received the

good news that they were not far from becoming carbon neutral. So, they looked for an electricity contractor that uses 100% renewable sources.

They also give back to the environment by planting trees and engaging in other activities to offset their emissions. The efforts bore fruit, and Appleby Manor was declared carbon neutral in 2015.

Warm guest, warm feedback But the energy refurbishment wasn’t made just to look good on paper and get fancy awards. A hotel’s lifeline is its guests, and if they’re not happy, the hotel is not happy.

That is absolutely not the case here, though, as the changes have been warmly welcomed

by Appleby Manor’s visitors.

“I didn’t expect a lot of feedback from customers,” Dunbobbin admits, yet online reviews on services such as Tripadvisor have certainly proved his expectations wrong.

“We did put a lot of information in the bedrooms to let the guests know what we’re doing and how we heat the hotel and such. We’ve had plenty of feedback and it’s all been very positive. Many people like the green attributes of the hotel.”

Someone at Hotel Cathays must have read those reviews as well, and while it wasn’t anywhere in the Dunbobbins’ plans four years ago, they are now waiting for the 25th of November to attend the awards ceremony in London. But what does the owner think of his hotel’s chances of prevailing against The Ritz?

“Well, our chances are one in four since its four nominees!” he laughs. “We hope that we’re going that extra mile needed here, and that our carbon neutrality would stand us in good stead.” l

November/December 2016 • 11

Bioenergy plant update

Plant update – Asia EnMass Energy

Asia Biogas Location Krabi, Thailand Alternative fuel Biogas Capacity 12,300MWh Feedstock Palm oil mill effluent Construction / expansion / Asia Biogas, an Irish-Singaporeanacquisition owned bioenergy developer, has begun commercial operation at a biogas plant in Thailand Completion date January 2016 Comment Asia Biogas hopes the facility’s second phase will be operational within 18 months

Location Pakistan Alternative fuel Renewable electricity Capacity 50MW Feedstock Agricultural waste Construction / expansion / EnMass Energy, a US-based green acquisition biomass start-up, is commencing its first large-scale biomass energy development project Project start date October 2016 Completion date Scheduled for 2018

Erex China Everbright Location China Alternative fuel Renewable electricity and heat Capacity Various Feedstock Municipal and food waste Construction / expansion / China Everbright International acquisition commenced the construction of 14 bio-projects in the third quarter of 2016 Project start date Q3 2016 Investment RMB3.8 billion (€508.6m)

China Everbright Location Can Tho, Vietnam Alternative fuel Electricity from waste Capacity 7.5MW Feedstock Household waste Construction / expansion / China Everbright International acquisition has won a contract to develop Vietnam’s first energy-from-waste (EfW) project Project start date August 2016 Investment $47 million (€42m)

CPP Group Location Thailand Alternative fuel Biogas Capacity 3.1MW Feedstock Tapioca pulp Construction / expansion / Italian biogas plant designer acquisition SEBIGAS has signed a new contract with Thailand-based food specialist CPP Group to supply it with a biogas facility Designer/builder SEBIGAS Project start date July 2016 Completion date Early 2017

12 • November/December 2016

Location Oita Prefecture, Japan Alternative fuel Renewable electricity Capacity 50MW Feedstock Biomass Construction / expansion / Japanese energy supplier Erex is acquisition building a 50MW biomass power station in Oita prefecture in Japan Completion date Scheduled for late 2016 Comment Erex also plans to build a 75MW biomass plant in Iwate and another 75MW project in Fukuoka

Guangdong Chant Group Location Yongcheng, Henan Province, China Alternative fuel Renewable heat and power Capacity 40MW Feedstock Agricultural and forestry waste Construction / expansion / Chinese gas equipment acquisition manufacturer Guangdong Chant Group is expanding into bioenergy with a planned biomass cogeneration facility in Eastern China Project start date May 2016 Completion date August 2017 Investment 500 million yuan (€67.4m)

Hitachi Zosen Location

Hitachiota, Ibaraki Prefecture, Japan Alternative fuel Renewable electricity Capacity 5.75MW Feedstock Waste wood Construction / expansion / Operations have started at Hitachi acquisition Zosen Corp.’s Miyanosato biomassfired power plant Completion date November 2015 Investment 3 billion yen (€22.7 million)

Bioenergy Insight

plant update Bioenergy IHI Corp.

Location Kagoshima prefecture, Japan Alternative fuel Renewable electricity Capacity 49MW Feedstock Woody biomass Construction / expansion / Japanese heavy equipment acquisition manufacturer IHI is constructing a biomass power station in Kagoshima Project start date February 2016 Completion date Late 2018 Mahachai Green Power Co. Location Samut Sakhorn Province, Thailand Alternative fuel Renewable electricity Capacity 9.5MWe Feedstock Coconut waste, wood residue, rice husks Construction / expansion / Mahachai Green Power Co. and acquisition DPCleanTech Group have completed the world’s first high temperature high-pressure biomass power plant, which converts coconut waste into energy Designer/builder DPCleanTech Group Completion date May 2016 Tangshan Steel Co. Location Hebei Province, China Alternative fuel Biomass pellets Capacity 10-12t/h Feedstock Wood chips, agricultural waste Construction / expansion / Tangshan Steel Co., a subsidiary of acquisition the Chinese Hebei Iron & Steel Co., has started producing biomass fuel at its northern Chinese facility.

Designer/builder Tanggang/Citic Group Completion date June 2016 Toyohashi Municipal Government Location Toyohashi, Aichi Prefecture, Japan Alternative fuel Biogas and renewable electricity Feedstock Municipal waste, sewage sludge Construction / expansion / The city of Toyohashi in the Aichi acquisition Prefecture, Japan, is planning to set up a combined biomass power generation facility Designer/builder Toyohashi Biowill Project start date November 2015

Bioenergy Insight

Ua Withya Location Buriram Province, Thailand Alternative fuel Renewable electricity Capacity Combined 17.4MW Feedstock Biomass Construction / expansion / Ua Withya, a Thailand-based acquisition transmission line tower manufacturer, has approved the acquisition of two biomass power plants Completion date January 2016 Investment $25.46 million (€22.7m) University of Agriculture Faisalabad Location Pakistan Alternative fuel Biogas Capacity 100kW Feedstock Agricultural waste Construction / expansion / University of Agriculture Faisalabad acquisition has installed a 100kW biomass gasification power plant at its site to promote green energy Completion date July 2016 Comment The gasification plant was built to overcome a power supply gap at the university Veolia Location

Hirakawa and Hanamaki, Tohoku, Japan Alternative fuel Renewable electricity Capacity Combiner 100GWh Feedstock Forestry residues Construction / expansion / Veolia has been awarded two acquisition contracts to operate two biomassfired power plants in northern Japan Completion date Hirakawa in November 2015, Hanamaki in December 2016 Investment €90 million

*This list is based on information made available to Bioenergy Insight at the time of printing. If you would like to update the list with additional plants for future issues, email liz@woodcotemedia.com

November/December 2016 • 13

Bioenergy tapioca feedstock From tapioca pulp to fertiliser through power production

Drawing a circle

I

n starch processing, pulp waste is the main issue, especially for the biggest factories that produce massive quantities. Dealing with this waste is difficult as it is not easily dried due to its high moisture and starch contents.1 The waste from these kind of mills generally comes in the forms of wastewater and tapioca pulp.

The processing of tapioca, a tuber usually cultivated in tropical areas also known as cassava or manioca, brings different kinds of social and economic problems to the local population.

In the past year, the Italian firm Sebigas has studied a new possible use for this leftover product as feedstock for biogas plants. The company intends to reduce the social and environmental impact of this production chain and increase the profitability of the industrial sector. Currently tapioca mills produce starch

to be sold in the local and international market. Some of the mills, in fact, are certified to sell starch in Europe, having adopted in the past years advanced technologies and certified methods of production.

Sebigas has already gained experience in wastewater treatment with biogas production. This technology is well known around the world and there are several successful cases of installed plants. On the other hand, there is little experience globally in tapioca pulp treatment, even though this feedstock has an incredible potential for power production (biomethane or electricity production).

A new approach There are various problems worldwide that can lead a starch mill to decide to uptake bioenergy production.

Sebigas has decided to

Sebigas has been conducting research on how to use tapioca waste for energy

14 • November/December 2016

harness the three main challenges the Asian starch market is facing, namely:

1) Transforming waste into a source Tapioca pulp has different uses in accordance to the location and local regulation.

Some areas allow selling it as animal food, some others consider it waste and dispose of it. During the rainy season the dry matter content decreases and so the tapioca pulp has to be dried out before selling it on to the market.

2) Energy self-sufficiency Most of the mills are located in the countryside, far away from main distribution lines.

Therefore, many of them suffer from electrical power outages. Stopping production for hours on end affects the product quality and of course the retail price.

3) Grid parity For the industrial sector, being able to produce energy nearly at grid price would mean total independence from energy price fluctuations and therefore the possibility to clearly define the production and selling price strategy.

It would definitely lead to choosing anaerobic digestion (AD) as the best solution.

The first commitment that brought Sebigas to tailor its analysis and research came from CPP Group, the first company wanting to find a solution for its tapioca processing leftovers. CPP Group is a tapioca starch manufacturer and was founded in 1974. It produces a variety of starch products in Southeast Asia, Japan,

Europe, and Thailand, where the CPP headquarters and production facilities are located. CPP Group works around 300 days a year, 24 hours a day, producing great quantities of tapioca pulp.

Sebigas usually approaches a “new” feedstock with a study and conceptual design phase. In the first stage, Sebigas studied the by-product, analysing both the gas yield potential, the possible inhibitory content for the AD process, and the particle size. The main goal and challenge is to find the best design parameters for: • Process (volume of digestion, pretreatment, organic volumetric load rate, retention time, temperature of digestion, etc.)

• Mechanical (mixing technology, charging systems, etc.)

• Cost reduction (construction in accordance to local regulations, minimum operation costs, etc.)

Technology used The feedstock can be used in AD either as 100% tapioca pulp or as tapioca pulp mixed with wastewater. This feedstock can be processed either in anaerobic lagoons (Sebigas sludge blanket technology) or in continuous flow stirred-tank reactors (CSTR). Sebigas collected data from literature and existing mills about resulting quantities of wastewater and tapioca pulp for each tonne of starch produced. The ratio between tapioca pulp and wastewater ranges from around 1:4 to 1:10. Therefore, the mix of both wastewater

Bioenergy Insight

tapioca feedstock Bioenergy

Diagram showing the biogas production cycle

and tapioca streams creates an average of 4-6% dry matter (DM) feedstock.

While the lagoon is perfectly suitable for 100% wastewater treatment, there may be some difficulties when processing tapioca pulp and wastewater together.

A portion of the pulp may remain unused, and thus the problem of disposal remains. On the other hand, CSTR technology would be suitable for the complete mix, but the necessary volume would lead to non-feasibility from an economic point of view. In conclusion, both solutions are feasible, but to keep the plant profitable, some of the material would not be treated.

Due to these reasons, Sebigas decided to investigate “on the field” the possibility to build a plant that already had a wastewater treatment system and adopt an additional AD system for 100% tapioca pulp production with Sebigas CSTR technology.

Sebigas performed all the necessary analysis to study and design an optimal system.

The batch tests for gas yield potential showed that tapioca pulp could reach the plateau level very quickly and with good specific potential.

A 100 tonnes of tapioca pulp could produce biogas from

Bioenergy Insight

9,100 Nm3 to 13,681 Nm3 in accordance to the quality, %DM, inhibitory content, and starch production process requirements. All tests were performed in the Sebigas lab in accordance to the VDI 4630 (fermentation of organic materials) standard and using the already adapted inoculum present in the company’s laboratory after hundreds of tests with a huge variety of feedstocks.

Towards grid parity and energy self-sufficiency Sebigas collected a lot of samples from different mills in order to have a good overview of the Thai tapioca pulp characteristics, since in the beginning the gas yield tests showed high potential indicating that every mill could produce roughly the same amount of energy it

consumes using tapioca pulp as feedstock for AD. This was an important point in achieving energy self-sufficiency.

Electricity could impact up to 9% of the selling costs of starch2, and therefore after the payback time this would be a huge saving and a step forward in the competitiveness of the final product.

The real challenge was to overcome the grid parity condition. Currently, the market is continuously changing and every investment has to target the fastest possible return of investment. All industrial owners would like to see economic paybacks sooner than after five years. The price of energy used to run the model is between 3.00 and 4.00 Baht/kWh (€0.07-€0.1 per kWh).

The biggest effort for Sebigas was to try to reduce the price of the plant and payback time through a high-efficiency process and extensive research into the local equipment suppliers in order to get the highest quality machines at the most affordable price. Due to the initial analysis on the feedstock and research on the most efficient applicable technology, Sebigas was able to achieve the target and propose a plant with a payback time of around three years and project IRR of around 30%, stating that the mill itself consumes all the energy produced.

The second step in the plant’s efficiency improvement process could be

installing a dryer to process at least a portion of the digestate in order to reduce the moisture content and create an easily transportable fertiliser to use on the field that is rich in N-P-K (nitrogen, phosphorus,and potassium) and is environmentally sustainable. By just using the heat from the engine, at least 35% of the digestate volume can be transformed in fertiliser with only 20% moisture content.

Conclusions Thanks to many years of research and analysis, Sebigas has developed and applied an efficient and 100% sustainable solution, a circular economy in which by-products become a new resource, eliminating the social and environmental problems of the rural areas where tapioca is cultivated.

The use of waste products as a new resource for biogas plants has also increased the profitability of the industrial process for CPP. The tapioca mill has become energyindependent and thus able to stabilise its production process and increase its economic competitiveness on the market.

The last step of this cycle has exploited the opportunity to convert the end product of AD, the digestate, into a further resource, a fertiliser that can be sold to the local industrial sector or used in the cultivation of tapioca.

This would become an additional source of profit for every tapioca starch production facility. l For more information:

This article was written by Luca Talia, product manager for Sebigas and Sebigas UAC director.

Visit: www.sebigas.com

References: 1 Sriroth K, Chollakup R, Chotineeranat S, Piyachomkwam K, Oates CG (1999). Processing of cassava waste for improved biomass utilization.

Sebigas specialises in the design and construction of biogas plants

2 Clean technology for the tapioca starch industry in Thailand (Orathai Chavalparit, Maneerat Ongwandee).

November/December 2016 • 15

Bioenergy regional focus in Africa A Ugandan company takes the frontline in the fight against deforestation and emissions, armed with locally-manufactured biomass briquettes and kilns

Seeing the wood for the trees in Uganda

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by Diana Taremwa Karakire

gandan social enterprise Eco Fuel Africa (EFA) has come up with an innovative method for turning agricultural waste into clean biomass energy, leading the way on how to cope with emissions and rampant deforestation from wood fuel usage in this agriculturally dependent East African nation. EFA uses coffee husks, corn cobs, ground nut shells, sugarcane waste, and rice husks to make clean and affordable briquettes. The briquettes are a carbon-neutral cooking fuel that functions the same as wood fuel, but is highly efficient, cleaner, smokeless, and burns longer.

They address one of the largest causes of emissions and deforestation, while also improving household health in Uganda.

“I got the idea of making briquettes when I visited my home village in rural western Uganda and found that my sister had missed school because she had to walk long distances to collect firewood,” says Moses Sanga, the director of EFA. “The trees that surrounded our home were gone, and she had to walk longer distances to gather firewood.

I had to find a solution.”

But this was not the only thing Sanga noticed in his hometown. “There was plenty of litter everywhere,” he says. “Uganda is primarily

Uganda’s EFA is helping to tackle deforestation by focusing on clean fuel

agricultural, but farm waste is just abandoned.”

It was then that Sanga began researching and learning everything he could about turning organic agricultural waste into fuel.

Armed with a bachelor’s degree in finance and with the help of engineering students from Makerere, Uganda’s leading university, he embarked on a mission to design kilns and briquetting machines using oil drums.

This led to the founding of EFA in April 2010.

How it happens The locally-made kilns carbonise agricultural waste to create char. The briquetting machines use high pressures to mould loose char into compact and solid fuel briquettes that can be used for cooking, boiling water, or heating rooms. EFA provides training to marginalised rural

16 • November/December 2016

farmers on how to turn their agricultural waste into char.

After the training, they are offered a chance to take home a kiln on a lease-to-own basis.

“We are currently working with 3,500 farmers who use our kilns,” says Sanga. “About 80% of the produced char is sold directly to EFA and each farmer earns at least $30 (€26.8) per month in additional income. EFA then presses the char into cleanburning fuel briquettes.”

The farmers are also trained on how to mix the biochar with local organic nutrients to make fertiliser, which they then put in their gardens. This has helped them increase their food harvests by more than 50% ensuring food security and reduced malnutrition.

EFA also works with a network of female microretailers that sell the briquettes to end-user customers. Selected women

are trained for three days and at the end of the training, EFA builds each of them a kiosk to use as a retail shop to sell briquettes in their local communities. Already, EFA has created a network of 2,000 female retailers in Uganda.

Each of these women retailers earns at least $152 per month.

“By using agricultural waste, we are creating clean, affordable and accessible energy, helping to create socially and economically thriving communities,” says Sanga. EFA currently provides fuel for more than 115,000 Ugandan families and is responsible for saving 500,000 acres of forests in averted deforestation. It also sells its products to institutions like schools, hospitals, hotels, and restaurants. “Our goal is to provide clean cooking fuel to every energy-poor household in Uganda by 2020 and a 150,000 tonne reduction in CO2 emissions

Bioenergy Insight

regional focus in Africa Bioenergy our forests and avert the 13,000 reported premature deaths resulting from indoor air pollution,” he says.

‘Need to raise awareness’

EFA kiln demonstrated by Moses Sanga

EFA authorised distributor

per year,” Sanga concludes.

Another company helping Ugandans embrace clean energy is Pamoja Cleantech, also specialising in waste-toenergy projects. It converts waste products into high energy density fuel pellets for industrial and domestic use. The firm also makes energy-efficient cooking stoves and operates microgrids powered by biomass fuels for direct electricity distribution in rural areas.

biomass, 7% petroleum products, and 2% electricity produced from hydro and thermal power plants.

The majority of the population relies on woodbased fuels in forms of firewood and charcoal as a main source of energy for cooking. This has led

Government support The government of Uganda has long regarded biomass energy as a viable option for clean energy generation. Uganda’s Renewable Energy Policy was put in place to increase the share of renewable energy in the energy mix from the current 4% to 61% of the total energy consumption by 2017. The policy recognises biomass as a significant source of modern, clean forms of energy with potential to contribute to Uganda’s energy sector development.

The government has also put in place a legal and institutional framework to attract private investments in development of modern energy forms. This includes the introduction of specific tax regimes that favour modern energy, such as preferential tax treatment and tax exemption. According to statistics from the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Development, Uganda’s energy consumption matrix currently stands at 90%

Bioenergy Insight

Despite its important economic and social role, uptake of modern biomass energy is still low in Uganda. According to a Ministry of Energy report on Uganda’s biomass energy situation, the country’s main challenge is not the supply of biomass but rather lack of awareness among the masses on modern forms biomass energy and lack of the appropriate technologies.

Therefore, there is a need for intensive promotion and marketing both in urban and rural areas to increase uptake

Uganda typically generates almost half of its modern energy output from hydropower dams along the River Nile to massive environmental degradation and health hazards among households.

According to the Uganda Demographic Health Survey (2006), cooking with wood fuel is a major cause of respiratory illnesses such as lung cancer among Ugandans, given that it emits a lot of smoke and affects the quality of air in a household.

Worse still, using biomass hugely depends on traditional technologies such as three-stone fireplaces and charcoal stoves that are quite inefficient in their fuel utilisation, leading to excessive use and demand for firewood.

According to Godfrey Ndawula, the Commissioner of Renewable Energy in the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Development, 18 million tonnes of firewood is burned every year, resulting in deforestation on a massive scale.

“EFA will help us save

of modern biomass energy alternatives. “We need to raise awareness of the new improved biomass energy and environmentally-friendly cook stoves to reduce firewood consumption and global emissions,” Ndawula says.

Biomass energy is also yet to receive recognition and prioritisation in terms of funding from government compared to other renewables such as hydro energy, which impedes its development.

Uganda typically generates almost half of its modern energy output from hydropower dams along the River Nile. The micro-scale social enterprises that form the bulk of investment in the biomass energy subsector face a number of challenges, including maintaining appropriate financial and human resources to sustain operations, and cannot afford market development costs.

Traditional financing through commercial banks

or commercial lending institutions has not been a viable option for many of these enterprises. The inability to predict monthly sales, the lack of collateral and credit history, and the large informal economy mean that commercial banks hesitate to provide loans to businesses. However, the Ugandan government has established the Uganda Energy Credit Capitalization Company (UECCC) to assist micro-project developers interested in doing business in the biomass energy subsector in Uganda in attaining financial closure.

Social enterprises are also looking to take advantage of the green climate fund and carbon financing in order to acquire funds and engage in product marketing and promotion, to help rural communities.

“If biomass waste-to-energy projects are scaled up, it could allow rural Ugandans to embrace cleaner cooking methods that protect the environment,” says Ronald Kaggwa, an environmental economist at the Uganda National Environmental Management Authority.

He adds: “If the country could turn more of its waste into energy, it would also bring it closer to its goals of switching to greener energy sources and reducing deforestation.”

According to Lighting Africa, a World Bank group programme to increase access to clean sources of energy, Africa has a large off-grid population. More than 590 million people live with no connection to their national electricity grid, exposing them to hazardous options. This is an indicator that biomass will continuously play an important role in Africa’s energy sector.

Investment in efficient, clean and less polluting modern biomass energy should be a priority if Africa’s emissions are to be curbed and forest cover conserved. l

November/December 2016 • 17

Bioenergy regional focus in Africa and Asia Improving lives and the environment in the developing world through clean-burning biomass stoves

Cooking up a solution

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any stove manufacturers worldwide currently build and distribute biomass-fuelled cookstoves, but the problem of producing a clean, efficient, and affordable cookstove that is widely adopted still persists. Cookstove adoption depends not only on stove performance but also on social, cultural, and economic factors that can vary greatly by geographical location.

Burn Design Lab’s (BDL) goal is to design, build, and disseminate clean cookstoves using a rigorous scientific and engineering process that also intrinsically involves the end user throughout cookstove development. BDL furthermore prioritises local production and distribution of the cookstoves at scale to ensure that cookstove production is sustainable and results in broad benefits for the health, environment and economy of a local population.

Collecting fuel is time consuming and labourious and is often done by women and children , BDL says

basic cooking methods (i.e., with the “three stone fire” concept) are also unsafe because they lead to excessive smoke and other household air pollution, which is responsible for 4.3 million premature deaths annually — more than AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis combined (estimates by World Health Organization).

Basic cookstoves are also environmentally damaging, because harvesting wood

leads to deforestation, and air pollution from fires contributes to carbon emissions that are responsible for global warming.

Manufacturing more effective cookstoves has been attempted for many years, but with limited short- and long-term success. Issues such as low levels of acceptance and poor adaptation by the local population (due to ineffective training and/ or cultural factors), lack

Hidden challenges Nearly three billion people in developing countries (based in Africa, Southeast Asia, Central and South America) still cook on open fires or cookstoves using biomass fuel such as wood, charcoal, dung, and agri-wastes. Gathering fuel can be a dangerous and timeconsuming task, with women and children often journeying distances from their homes to collect sticks and branches, exposing themselves to violent crime and other dangers in the natural environment.

Apart from the huge burden of collecting fuel,

of durability, performance shortcomings, and inability to adapt to fuel changes have emerged as major factors preventing existing stoves from making the dramatic impact that was envisioned at their well-intentioned launch.

Another major challenge in producing clean cookstoves is cost. Often, stove manufacturers work with limited budgets and must continuously find ways to control production and distribution costs.

Cookstoves for domestic use in developing countries are sometimes distributed for free or at subsidised pricing by international nongovernmental organisations (NGO) and local governments.

When sold on the open market, revenues from sales ($10 (€9) to $60 per stove) typically can barely match production costs.

Consequently, at the end of the day, there is no profit to reinvest into researching and developing the technology for improved, next-generation cookstove models. Innovative cookstove designs that can positively impact health and the environment — and also address cultural factors — requires engineering expertise in combustion, heat transfer, fluid dynamics, and material science. In addition, it is essential to involve the end user in every stage of the design process. In practice, the application of rigorous scientific methods to address these problems has proven too costly to afford.

Holistic approach

Air pollution from open fires can lead to premature deaths

18 • November/December 2016

BDL is working to change these issues by partnering

Bioenergy Insight

regional focus in Africa and Asia Bioenergy social venture company) is manufacturing between 6,000 and 10,000 Jikokoa’s monthly at their factory near Nairobi, Kenya. More than 150,000 units have been produced and sold to date. The Jikokoa saves families up to $260 (€232) per year in fuel costs.

Kuniokoa stick-fed rocket stove

Prototype and experimental stove units at BDL’s facility

with local manufacturers and implementers to blend the latest science and engineering with local organisations connected to the countries and communities being served. BDL focuses on making a measurable positive impact with each cookstove design project that is undertaken. Impact is defined as a combination of a stove’s performance, durability, level of adoption, and ability to scale. A holistic and iterative approach is followed during research, design, and development projects attempting to maximise a stove’s impact.

Four key steps can help to maximise the stove’s impact: 1. Performance: To make the cookstoves safe, efficient, and clean-burning, labbased research, design and development is augmented by field-based pilot and emissions studies to determine the stoves actual performance in the country or region where it will be used with local fuels.

2. Adoption: To make people want to buy a stove and keep using it repeatedly, BDL holds in-countrybased focus groups, home placements, and pilot studies to get reliable design input from future customers of the stove.

3. Durability: To ensure that the stoves will last, BDL’s

Bioenergy Insight

expertise in cookstove material science is coupled with extensive and ongoing durability testing both in the laboratory and in the field.

4. Scale: To ensure that the stoves get into as many users’ homes as possible, BDL partners with local manufacturers and distributors from the earliest stages of the project to full scale.

Together with a team from the Mechanical Engineering Department at the University of Washington, BDL developed the Kuniokoa natural-draft “rocket” wood-burning stove for use in East Africa.

Funded by a grant from the US Department of Energy and backed by an investment

Current projects and success stories BDL’s current and planned projects include secondgeneration stick-fed and gravity-fed rocket stoves, a bamboo-fuelled stove and a high efficiency plancha stove.

Stoves are designed specifically for the needs of a local population, be it in Kenya, the Philippines, or Guatemala.

Many cookstoves designed by BDL are already commercially produced, while others are in the design and development phase. Some of our projects are described below.

from Unilever and Acumen, this stove is cleaner and more efficient than any other rocket stove being sold today. Production of the Kuniokoa started this autumn in BMC’s Kenyan factory. The stove will be sold to farmers and plantation workers on Unilever’s tea estates in Kenya and Tanzania at a cost of approximately $38 dollars.

Initial user satisfaction with the stove, gauged by focus group discussions and home placement of a beta (preview) product, is very high.

Concrete Eko-Stove BDL developed the Eko-Estufa cookstove for Mexican building materials specialist Cemex in 2012. In November 2014, Cemex committed to installing 100,000 concrete cookstoves to improve the quality of life of approximately half a million people in Mexico and Guatemala by 2017. This cookstove reduces wood consumption for families in Central America by up to 25kg per day.

Gravity stick-fed rocket stove

The Jikokoa charcoal stove was developed at BDL with more than 150,000 units sold in East Africa

Developed in cooperation with Bataan Peninsula State University in the Philippines (BPSU), this cookstove is

Jikokoa charcoal cookstove The Jikokoa is a charcoal stove designed for East Africa that reduces fuel consumption by more than 50% and reduces harmful emissions by more than 60% compared to traditional cooking methods.

BDL’s sister organisation, Burn Manufacturing Co. (BMC, a

Field testing of stick-fed rocket stove

November/December 2016 • 19

Bioenergy regional focus in Africa and Asia

Eko-Estufa concrete cookstove developed for Cemex

self-feeding with minimal tending required. BPSU has asked for further help from BDL to increase efficiency, reduce emissions, and reduce manufacturing cost.

Institutional stove BDL is partnering with InStove, an institutional stove manufacturer from

Guatemalan woman cooking tortillas on a plancha cooktop stove

Nearly three billion people in developing countries still cook on open fires or cookstoves Cottage Grove, Oregon, US, to decrease the cost of manufacturing the institutional stove in the developing world while at the same time maintaining its long life, high efficiency,

and strong user appeal. BDL is also making plans with InStove to develop wood-burning stoves for agricultural and microenterprise applications that are currently widely practiced on open, threestone fires in West Africa.

Improved plancha stove

Better Stoves Save Lives and Forests.

You Can Help.

BDL is currently partnering with the Hands for Peacemaking Foundation in Guatemala to design and build a nextgeneration plancha (cooktop) stove. Hands for Peacemaking Foundation is an NGO working with the people of northern Guatemala manufacturing cookstoves, latrines, school desks, and water systems.

About BDL BDL operates its office and test facility in Vashon,

b u r n d e s i g n l a b. o r g 20 • November/December 2016

Washington, US, and was founded in 2010 by cookstove visionary and passionate entrepreneur Peter Scott.

What started as a passion to fight deforestation in Africa has grown into an organisation that has successfully designed and implemented improved cookstoves across the globe.

By engineering the most efficient way to cook with local fuels, BDL and its partners are combating the effects of deforestation and improving the lives and health of local indigenous people.

As a non-profit organisation, BDL relies on grants, corporate sponsorships, and private donations, along with R&D work contracted by cookstove implementers and manufacturers. l

For more information:

This article was written by Paul Means and Arie Verloop of Burn Design Lab. Visit www.burndesignlab.org

Gravity stick-fed rocket stove

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Handling a World of Materials

November/December 2016 • 21

Bioenergy briquettes Putting the large amounts of biological waste in Africa to good use can help turn the tide that threatens to wipe out the continent’s forests

Tapping the untapped

A

frica is a new growth market for briquetting companies, as there is a demand for sustainable energy resources as an alternative to existing energy resources. The existing resources are mainly firewood and charcoal, often from nonsustainable forests. The current equipment manufacturers supplying the market provide mostly products of low quality with a lack of documentation and after sales service, often leaving the customers to their own devices. The result is that the machinery breaks down within a short time and, as it is often not repaired, factories stop working.

High quality briquetting equipment can densify different types of biomass to create high quality briquettes that reduce the volume to be handled drastically. The briquettes become a uniform product with a low moisture content, which leads to reduced transport expenses.

Burning briquettes in efficient stoves will not only be more efficient but also reduce overall fuel consumption. No additives are usually needed in briquette production. Using briquettes made from wood residues or agricultural wastes also reduces consumption of firewood and wood from forests, thus having a positive effect on deforestation.

The African market In Africa, there are two main market segments for briquetting machinery manufacturers. The first is larger companies wishing to switch from firewood or fossil fuels to renewable energy. In

order to become sustainable, many of these companies can benefit from biomass.

Some good examples of how to do it are using sugarcane bagasse to make briquettes to replace firewood, or using pineapple waste.

The second segment is domestic cooking, namely replacing firewood and locally produced charcoal with briquettes from wood residues or agricultural wastes. For poor people in the area, the largest part of daily food preparation takes places with an open fire with firewood as the most common type of fuel.

A lion’s share of this wood used comes from local forests and results in deforestation. The alternative is to use briquettes made from wood residues or agricultural wastes.

To this end, Danish briquetting company C.F. Nielsen has delivered a plant to Ghana with the support from the Nordic Environment Finance Corp. (NEFCO). The plant has a capacity of approx.

600-700kg per hour, which seems to be far too high for this concept. Therefore, a more reasonably sized plant is in development, producing around 150-200kg of briquettes per hour. This concept is named the “Village Concept” and C.F. Nielsen is in co-operation with Care Denmark to introduce it in Uganda, based on support from the Danish Government’s Danida programme.

The project aims to develop a “village” model for briquetting wastes at a capacity between 150-200kg per hour.

Local farmers or smaller companies with residues can either sell their residues to the village factory or they can exchange residues for finished

22 • November/December 2016

C.F. Nielsen’s managing director Mogens Slot Knudsen in a pineapple field (Del Monte plantation) in Thika, Kenya

briquettes. C.F. Nielsen has the technical capability to develop a solution for this new concept. It intends to develop the machine in Denmark, but part of the production will be outsourced to Eastern Europe in order to secure a reasonable price for the equipment. The supplementary equipment for downsizing and drying will be sourced from the Far East, but the equipment will be developed, manufactured, and documented under C.F. Nielsen’s supervision to ensure it meets the necessary standards.

Briquetting pineapple waste in Kenya C.F. Nielsen has for a couple of years been working with the company Global Supply Solutions in Kenya. The owner of the company, Allan Marega, has obtained the rights to use pineapple waste from the Del Monte pineapple plantations in Thika, Kenya.

The Del Monte plantations are a large multinational farming enterprise with vast areas of pineapple under cultivation.

They harvest pineapple during the entire year and the waste yield is approximately 77

tonnes per hectare. In total, the plantations produce more than 800,000 tonnes of pineapple waste per year.

Currently, this waste is a health hazard hosting rodents and fungi and has to be burned, as it is not used for anything.

In Kenya, the main source of fuel for industries and households is wood, either in the form of firewood or charcoal. The amount of wood used is very high, and the country’s tea factories alone use approximately 500,000 tonnes per year. The continuous use of firewood results, as mentioned earlier, in deforestation. Something will urgently need to be done about this, as there is only about 7% forest cover remaining in Kenya against the UN recommended standard of 10%. A change in weather patterns and increases in temperature can already be clearly observed.

The use of local resources like biomass to help mitigate the effects of climate change is a realistic solution for African countries as agriculture is widespread and continuously growing. Using briquettes from agricultural waste like pineapple can contribute to reducing deforestation.

Bioenergy Insight

briquettes Bioenergy The main market for Global Supply Solutions will be the mentioned tea factories, but also other industries and private households.

The project starts with the collection of raw material from the field. The raw material will dry in the sun, after which it will be baled and transported to the factory where it will be stored until briquetted. Some of the raw material will contain moisture and will have to be dried during the briquetting process. The pineapple waste material is shredded, stones are removed, and the material is milled down in size. Sand will be removed before briquetting.

After briquetting, the end product will be stored and packed in different forms and then delivered to the clients.

The installed capacity of the new factory will be 6 tonnes of briquettes per hour, which, when fully operational, can reach a capacity of up to 40,000 tonnes per year. Once implemented, Global Supply Systems plans to expand the factory and may also introduce the concept to other countries.

The Village Concept in Uganda The partnership between C.F. Nielsen and Care

Danmark aims to increase the production and use of renewable fuel briquettes made from freely available agricultural waste in Uganda.

By replacing the current unsustainable wood fuel and charcoal, the project can not only reduce deforestation, but also generate local income and employment.

The partners will collaborate on testing adapted technology in a real-life setting and defining sustainable business models based on studies of marketing and financing options. Local capacity will be built for managing briquette production and using improved stoves and briquettes. The project is expected to lead to expansion of market opportunities for local entrepreneurs.

Ugandan households rely on collected firewood in rural areas and charcoal in urban areas. Of Uganda’s total energy consumption, 66% is covered by wood, and 92% of Ugandan households have either a three-stone fireplace with wood or a charcoal stove as their primary cooking device.

Per capita consumption of firewood is 680kg per year in rural areas and 240kg per year in urban areas. An estimated

44 million tonnes of woody biomass are being cut each year, while the country’s forests can only produce 26 million tonnes sustainably.

Forests are essential, as they support Uganda’s economy, people’s livelihoods, and sustain biodiversity. They are also vital in mitigating climate change by providing carbon storage and sequestration services. The pressure to convert forests into agricultural land is high because of high population growth (3.2% annually), low productivity, land degradation, poor capacity of forest management agencies, and widespread corruption. Uganda’s forest cover is reducing at an alarming rate, as between 1990 and 2010, Uganda lost 37% of its forests. It is estimated that if current trends continue, Uganda’s forests will disappear completely by 2050.

Meanwhile, many biomass residues from agriculture are not collected or used, and are instead left to rot or are burned in the fields. C.F. Nielsen has made an initial market study for Uganda, which documented the availability of biomass waste in large quantities across the country, including sawdust, bagasse,

rice husks and straw, sunflower hulls, cotton seed hulls, tobacco dust, maize cobs and stalks, groundnut shells, and flower waste. If biomass was collected and used for fuel, it would be a win-win situation for both the people of Uganda, their forests, and the climate.

A new machine Industrial-grade briquetting machines are currently very large, with capacities exceeding 500kg/h as a minimum. This size limits their use to large facilities with abundant raw material.

There is also a lot of smallscale equipment with 5-10 kg/h capacities, but these are not industrial grade and will not last in long-term operations. Thus, building up a briquetting business using these low-capacity machines will be difficult.

In order to be more flexible and to serve smaller communities, C.F. Nielsen is now looking at developing a machine — in addition to its leading high-capacity range — with a capacity of 150200 kg/hour with auxiliary equipment for breaking down and pre-drying biomass. The machine can then not only be used for various materials like wood and agricultural waste products, but it can also be moved around to various locations according to the agricultural seasons. The briquettes can be used instead of charcoal, and by turning organic waste into solid fuel, it will reduce deforestation.

The user will then have a solid product with which to make briquettes that are also of better quality than the cheaper options. People with excess organic waste can turn their waste into valuable briquettes for their own use or for further retail, thus increasing their income. l For more information:

A project in Kenya is using pineapple waste and turning it into fuel briquettes

Bioenergy Insight

This article was written by Mogens Slot Knudsen, managing director, at C.F. Nielsen, Denmark.

Visit: www.cfnielsen.com

November/December 2016 • 23

Bioenergy regional focus Asia An Indian company has developed an innovative business model of biomass aggregation, processing and supply that also boosts rural economies

A chain of benefits

B

iomass-based power generation is a renewable, widely available, carbonneutral technology.

It has the potential to provide significant employment and income generation in rural communities, particularly among farmers and villagers.

The cumulative capacity of biomass power generation in India is about 1,400MW, out of which only about 50% is operating. The rest is either shut down or operating at a low plant load factor.

The major reason for nonperformance of installed biomass power plants is the unavailability of required quantities of biomass at reasonable cost. This is due to a lack of proper fuel supply logistic chain and presence of trader/middlemen cartels forcing the biomass price to go artificially high.

India’s government has mandated that all oil marketing companies in the country must achieve 20% ethanol blending in petrol by 2017. Against this background, oil companies are planning to set up biorefineries based on lignocellulosic raw materials to produce second-generation ethanol to blend with petrol in different Indian states. The raw materials include biomass residues such as paddy straw, cotton stalk, cane waste, rice husk, bagasse, corn cob, and mustard husk, for example.

Fuel security for biomass-

VLE/Farmers

based industry can be achieved by establishing an independent fuel supply chain, starting from the fields and ending at the factory gate. This chain must involve farmers, local labour, and fuel producers’ own staff for supervision and control of a complete fuel logistic chain.

However, it becomes too cumbersome for power plants or process industry to manage entire biomass logistic chains on their own, as it requires a lot of professional and trained manpower.

to biomass-based power plants and process plants that own biomass boilers.

PRESPL is the largest player in the organised biomass fuel supply business in India and handles more than 1,000 tonnes per day of biomass, such as paddy straw, cane waste, maize cob, bagasse, cotton stalk, and briquetted forms of various biomasses.

In order to develop the biomass supply chain, PRESPL trainers select rural youths to develop them as villagelevel entrepreneurs (VLEs).

Fuel security for biomass-based industry can be achieved by establishing an independent fuel supply chain Thus, there is a need for specialised companies in the field of biomass aggregation and processing. There is also a need for companies that supply biomass to processing plants, like paper and sugar facilities.

A new solution Punjab Renewable Energy Systems (PRESPL) was established in March 2011 and its main aim was to address the principal issue of biomass fuel supply management.

The company looks into aggregation, processing, transportation, and supply

Raw biomass fuel

Collection, transportation and storage

VLEs are provided with the necessary machinery, such as shredders and balers, and are given responsibility of collecting biomass from individual farmers, processing it, and transporting it to power plants.

VLEs are paid at predetermined rates for biomass supplied to the plant. They will be strategically located across a catchment area so as to achieve maximum reach in the potential targeted areas.

The below diagram depicts the typical flow of biomass supply chain management involving farmers and VLEs. This biomass model is

Processing

unique, innovative, and sustainable. One of the reasons why this model is sustainable is because PRESPL enters into longterm fuel supply agreements with its clients with predetermined prices and fuel supply schedules for the calendar year. This way the company guarantees quantity and quality of fuel supply for parameters such as moisture, gross calorific value, etc. PRESPL acts as single point solution for all of the client’s fuel needs. Thus, the power plant does not need to be bothering itself with biomass collection.

Due to the establishment of a managed fuel supply chain, plants are also able to operate at design plant load factor in range of 70-80%, which results in profitable and sustainable plant operation.

Lending to biomass power projects also becomes easier for financial institutions, as there is fuel linkage and biomass fuel supply security due to expertise in supply chain management.

PRESPL is the only company in the organised biomass aggregation and supply sector in India. Witnessing the growth prospects of PRESPL in the biomass space, a multinational private equity fund has picked up minority equity stake in PRESPL. The company has become a “centre of excellence”, and has been

Processed biomas

Power plants and process plant

Flow diagram of biomass supply chain management

24 • November/December 2016

Bioenergy Insight

regional focus Asia Bioenergy Energy crops

Dry matter

Carbohydrates

Biological conversion Starch sugar

Wood cellulose

Fermentation

Acid or enzymatic hydrolysis

Distillation

Thermo-chemical conversion

Oil

Oil extraction

Dry matter

Raw vegetable oil

Esterification

Pyrolysis

Combustion Gasification Liquification

Ethanol Bio-oil charcoal gas

Gas

Bio-oil

Ester + glycerin Heat

Product chain that can be derived from biomass

approached by other private entities and entrepreneurs to provide technical assistance and consultancy services for setting up a biomass fuel supply business.

The PRESPL team conducts research and collaborates with other worldwide players and has prepared a “knowledge management system” on business models and best practices for biomass supply across the world. In the short span of about four years, PRESPL has served more than 25 biomass power and process plants and has supplied more than 400 billion tonnes of various biomasses, which has offset about 2,200 billion tonnes of CO2 generation.

PRESPL has received an award for the Most Innovative Company in Renewable Sector by Power Today Magazine, and the selection was made by professional services network PwC. Environmental cause Farmers in many Indian states, such as Punjab, Haryana, Bihar, and Uttar Pradesh, simply burn crop residues such as paddy straw, mustard stalk, and cane waste to clear their fields for the next crop, as they generally have two-three crops in the year. The particulate and carbon monoxide emissions from burning crop residues affect not only the local

Bioenergy Insight

population, but also lead to deadly smog in all surrounding areas and cities, which has led to many accidents. In fact, there has been a sharp rise in chest and respiratory diseases in many parts of the country due to pollution on account of burning crop residues.

In a biomass power or process plant, biomass is burnt according to scientifically proven methods inside the boiler and state-of-the-art pollution control equipment, such as bag filters and electro-static precipitators, are installed to capture particulate emissions. Thus, burning biomass in a boiler not only prevents pollution, but also leads to clean and renewable power generation.

In fact, power generated biomass directly replaces the power from fossil fuels.

Power from fossil fuels not only leads to GHG emissions, but also leads to problems in the balance of payments on account of purchasing oil and coal from other countries.

For every 10MW of power generated at a biomass-based power plant, about 56 billion tonnes of CO2 emissions are avoided annually.

Socio-economic benefits PRESPL also provides an additional source of revenue to the farmers through the sale of feedstock, which

would otherwise be burned or left in open fields, leading to deadly particulate and methane emissions. Farmers are happy to get the extra income from selling crop residues, which helps them purchase seeds, fertilisers, and other products to help their farms become more productive for the next crop.

They are also able to improve their lifestyle and increase expenditure on health and education. For the collection, storage, and supply of biomass, many tractors, trolleys, and other farming equipment are also involved. These vehicles are also provided by local farmers, which again results in additional income.

The supply system also provides income and employment to the entire rural chain involving VLEs, farmers, and rural youth. In fact, many unemployed youth in India’s rural areas find employment opportunities either as VLEs or unskilled labour in biomass harvest, processing, storage, and transportation.

This leads to the creation of skilled and semi-skilled work force in rural India through “on-the-job training”.

A case study on the socioeconomic benefits of supplying cotton stalks to an operating 13MW biomass-based power plant is depicted in the accompanying figure. The plant requires 450 tonnes of biomass per day and delivers an estimated 1,421 green jobs within the rural community through the collection of biomass waste and transportation operations.

Biomass residues such as cotton stalk, Juliflora, maize cob and others have multiple end uses in power generation, generation of biofuels and biochemicals, biogas and bio-CNG production, all of which have immense economic value. PRESPL is engaged in active dialogue with many oil companies about acting as a partner for the supply of biomass feedstock to biorefineries. The biofuels and

biochemicals derived from biomass will replace petrol, diesel and other petroleum products, which reduces the need to import oil from abroad.

The biomass supply chains also enable micro-finance and financial inclusion of rural populations with the microfinance and banking sectors.

Many companies and banks are interested in financing rural youth to buy agricultural equipment so that they can become VLEs in order to aggregate and supply biomass.

The supply chains also aid in the creation of small-scale industry. Many VLEs and developers are setting up biomass briquetting/pelleting plants and converting biomass into value-added products that have high density and thus reduce storage and transportation costs. These biomass products are in high demand by many Indian process plants. This also leads to employment of local population in local operations.

Conclusions PRESPL’s biomass aggregation and supply business model is innovative and answers to a call from biomass power and biomass-based process plants in India. It directly leads to renewable heat and power generation, which is environmentally friendly and reduces GHG, particulate, and carbon monoxide emissions.

Biomass supply has immense positive contribution to the Indian rural economy in terms of income and employment generation for farmers, VLEs and rural youth.

Furthermore, it also leads to the development of other value added products, such as biofuels, and the establishment of small-scale industries such as briquetting plants. l

For more information:

This article was written by Monish Ahuja, managing director, and Manish Saxena, deputy general manager at Punjab Renewable Energy Systems. Visit: www.prespl.com

November/December 2016 • 25

Bioenergy big interview Forest Fuels managing director Peter Solly

Hot on the acquisition trail

O

ne of the UK’s largest suppliers and distributors of premium-grade wood fuel products has seen its turnover smash through the £15 million (€17m) mark following acquisitions and a steady period of organic growth.

National wood fuel business Forest Fuels currently supply wood chips and wood pellets to more than 2,000 customers, through a network of 40 depots across the UK. The company was recently acquired by UK biomass and renewable project specialist Aggregated Micro Power (AMP). Liz Gyekye caught up

with Forest Fuels’ managing director Peter Solly to find out more about the company.

Can you tell me a bit about yourself?

I joined Forest Fuels in 2010 as managing director. Within the six years since I started here, we have grown the business from a £500,000 turnover company to a £15 million turnover company.

Before I joined Forest Fuels I had been involved in various other businesses. My background is in forestry and I previously had a forestry landscaping business. It’s quite a nice sector for me because it feels similar to

26 • November/December 2016

what I know and like, which is wood. It has been a very fastgrowing sector. I don’t know to what extent it will continue to grow in the future, but over the last six years it has been a fast-growing sector.

We are still pushing ahead with our acquisition strategy, so we expect our business to continue to grow substantially as we take on more businesses.

How are you finding the market at the moment?

We are biomass fuel suppliers; We are not installers. We are one step removed from the impact of subsidy changes.

Once somebody has made a

decision to install a boiler, based upon a decision on what the subsidy regime is at the time, then they will need fuel for the next 20 years. So, our sector of the market is less volatile compared to those who are involved in installation work.

There are fewer installations happening by number at the moment.

However, the ones that are happening tend to be big.

Our approach to the market is to try and continue to grow organically by taking our fuel supply to the new boilers that are being installed. Nevertheless, we also have a clear strategy

Bioenergy Insight

big interview Bioenergy to grow by acquisition and there are a number of acquisitions we have done in the past year. This is part of our strategy to grow and consolidate the market.

In the last year we have acquired five companies.

We have been reasonably acquisitive in the last four or five years. We bought a customer base in the Liverpool area in October last year and we bought a business called Lakes Biomass in Cumbria in January 2016. In March, Forest Fuels were bought

by AMP. Since that time we have acquired Midlands Wood Fuel in July. We also recently acquired the customer contracts of Cornwall-based wood pellet business Mi Generation in October.

Forest Fuels is quite hot on the acquisition trail at the moment. What is behind this?

It’s the consolidation of what is a pretty fragmented industry. Consolidation has been coming for quite a little while and it will continue.

We will carry on acquiring more businesses. We have a really clear strategy and we have the funding to go out and continue acquiring more businesses as we roll out our strategy.

How does your supply chain work?

We are focused on the

renewable heat incentive (RHI) market. Our customers are typically at the smaller end. This could include customers using a 100150kW boiler to heat a care home, perhaps, or maybe a house or holiday cottage.

Our customers could also include a school with a 2MW boiler. We have positioned ourselves in the middle segment of the market.

We deal with wood chips and wood pellets. Our wood chip is locally-sourced. We have local depots taking timber from local woodlands and local sawmills into the depots. This is processed by locally employed staff and then taken out to local customers. It works in a tight geographical area, partly because of the ethics of it and partly because of carbon savings and economics.

Wood pellets are very different. More than 50% of the wood pellets coming into the UK are imported.

We use some imports and some UK-produced pellets.

We are not producing pellets as we are buying that from the producers.

The imported wood pellets are generally from Europe.

How are you finding growth in the industry at the moment?

The growth is slower than it has previously been. There

is quite a lot of shaking down to do in the industry and I think there will be a lot of consolidation. This is because I think some people will realise that their businesses might not grow five-fold as they originally thought around two or three years ago. Now, you may be saying that ‘my business is hard work, low margin and competitive’. You might also be saying ‘my business is not going to grow that much because there are not as many installations going in’. I think there might be more consolidation as people decide to team up with other players in the industry, rather than battle it out alone. In three to five years’ time, you may see a relatively small number of relatively large players in our industry.

Are the warm winters affecting you at all?

In a way we are one market, but there are two very different parts of that market. Being a producer and distributor are two very different things. As a distributor, we are energy suppliers to the customer.

For us, it’s about thinking what the customer wants and providing them with a quality service. It doesn’t matter that much to us how cold or warm it is. Inevitably, the colder it is the more we supply.

We still have a very strong business in a warm winter.

If you are a producer, the change in temperature has a bigger impact because in a cold winter you might be kicking yourself that you haven’t got capacity because people are clamouring to buy pellets. However, in a warm winter you could have a big pile of pellets which you can’t sell to anybody because it’s not cold enough.

From a producer’s point of view the warm winters are really challenging and from a distributors point of view they are not great, but they do not have a huge impact on us.

What one big challenge does the industry face? Any legislative issues to address?

There needs to be clarity over the Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI), specifically over its funding levels post-March 2017.

RHI is confirmed until 2021. The total budget is confirmed. However, there is a consultation out at the moment about the exact detail over what the potential funding rates will be. There are several questions to ask.

How will this payment rate impact biomass versus other technologies? Even within biomass, what is the detail of how that payment is going to be apportioned within different boiler sizes? l

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November/December 2016 • 27

Bioenergy co-digestion Making use of the multiple biomasses in Asia could give the continent’s biogas industry a significant boost

The perfect recipe

I

n Asia, there is so much more available biomass that could be exploited by high performing co-digestion biogas plants, generating a huge biogas output for renewable electricity in the grid. In recent times, anaerobic digestion (AD) plants in Southeast Asia have focused too much on harnessing the energy content of palm oil mill effluent (POME) as a single substrate for biogas plants. However, there is a greater potential for AD in Asia. By considering available resources of other types of biomass in the vicinity of the biogas plant, both existing plants and project developers for new ones could improve the bottom line of their business considerably.

The energy content of POME is quite low, and by mixing it with other types of biomass rich in energy content, biogas plants could increase their energy output from the same quantity of biomass being treated. Very thin biomasses will require very large plants and Danish biogas producer Xergi finds that there are ample opportunities to add more energy-rich solids to increase the gas yield.

This strategy has been adopted by a great number of European high performance biogas plants that have been operating for many years.

The thin pig manure is thus frequently being enriched with more energy-rich solids, such as straw or chicken manure. These solutions are based on proven mature technologies and combined with cutting-edge technology

they enable a wider range of biomasses for biogas.

Exploration of available biomasses The main goal of this strategy is to explore available biomasses in the vicinity of the biogas plant, and to add the technology that enables stable and high performing biogas production. Depending on the quality of the infrastructure, transport costs, and the energy content of the biomass, it is possible to determine

The next important step is to get the recipe right. When different types of biomass are being mixed, there is a risk of unstable biogas production, including harmful foaming in the digester tank.

This risk is minimised by developing a recipe — the right mix of biomasses — that generates the highest possible amount of biogas and maintains the biological balance in the digester.

Xergi has developed the Flexfeed technology, which is designed for mixing and

When different types of biomass are being mixed, there is a risk of unstable biogas production the distance within which it is profitable to transport the biomass from relevant locations to the biogas plant.

Energy rich biomasses in Asia could be animal manure, crop residues, empty fruit bunches (EFB), bagasse, straw from rice, household waste, chicken manure, napier grass, industrial organic waste, and commercial waste. Based on all these sources, it is possible to determine the quantity of biomass available for AD within a certain range of the biogas plant. Xergi usually cooperates with the customers to evaluate the biomass resources and to make feasibility studies in order to make a solid business case both for existing and new biogas plants.

28 • November/December 2016

preheating the biomass before it is pumped into the digester.

Flexfeed has been designed to follow a specific recipe for mixing the available biomasses. This technology also makes it easy to adjust

the recipe when the flow of biomass to the biogas plant changes. All experience shows that the biomass input will change many times during a biogas plant’s 20-year life span. If any foaming should happen despite the recipe, it is also a great advantage that the foaming will be limited to the Flexfeed module, thus avoiding any foaming in the digester.

Pretreatment of difficult biomasses The search for more biomass for the growing number of biogas plants in Europe in recent years has led to the development of new pretreatment technologies for difficult biomasses such as straw, deep litter, and other types of biomass with strong cellular structures. For these cases, Xergi has developed the X-chopper pretreatment technology, which is designed for crushing various types of biomass. X-chopper is a high performance technology that has a demonstrated ability to produce 140 tonnes of

X-chopper for pretreatment of difficult biomasses

Bioenergy Insight

co-digestion Bioenergy

Large-scale biogas plant with optimised tank and mixing design

biomass per day, and a proven track record since 2013.

The advantage of the X-chopper when compared to similar technologies is that it operates continuously, which ensures a more stable and higher volume biogas production in combination with the Flexfeed technology.

Another strong trend in utilising energy from waste is increased focus on chicken manure use in biogas plants.

Using this high energy biomass has been a major focus area for Xergi over the past years, and the company is now building the first 100% chicken manure plant based on its NiX technology. NiX technology is a patented pretreatment technology which makes it possible to achieve a high gas yield in biogas plants which use a high nitrogen feedstock.

Operation of a biogas plant When a biogas plant is codigesting multiple types of biomass, it is important to ensure complete stirring of the contents of the digester.

Bioenergy Insight

Flexfeed modules for mixing and preheating of biomasses

Xergi utilises a mixing technology that includes both the digester design, based on a tall digester, and the most energy-efficient mixing technologies. The stirring is carried out by a central, top-mounted mixing system. Engineering analysis, as well as practical experience, has shown that this design provides optimal

mixing with the lowest energy consumption. The external installation of the mixing system also means that routine maintenance of the system can be performed without opening the digester and consequent loss of production.

When designing and building a biogas plant, it is also important to have the

operation of the plant in mind. It is a crucial part of Xergi’s design philosophy that the plant must be designed to allow for operation and thereby gas production even if planned or unplanned maintenance takes place, including replacement of pumps, mixers, and the like.

To keep biogas production both high and stable when co-digesting multiple feedstocks, the processes must be monitored 24/7.

It is also important that the operating staff understands both the technologies of the biogas plant, how these technologies work with the biomasses, and how the different types of biomasses can be mixed to optimise biogas production in the plant. Xergi runs a commissioning process that includes thorough training for the operational staff in order to make sure that they understand the interaction of the biogas plant technologies and the various types of feedstock.

Multiple biomass resources are available in huge quantities in Asia. The high performing biogas plants from Xergi can generate a high energy output from a mix of various types of biomasses.

The flexibility of the Xergi biogas technology with regard to the input mix of biomasses ensures that the business case of the plant remains solid, even with large variations in the biomass input. Therefore, a strategy of co-digesting multiple biomasses in high performance biogas plants has huge potential in Asia in terms of building a sustainable and self-supplying energy production industry. l

For more information:

This article was written by Ole Trudslev, business development and sales manager, and Jorgen Fink, country manager at Xergi.

Visit: www.xergi.com

November/December 2016 • 29

Bioenergy xxxx

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15 – 16 February 2017 Cologne · Germany

www.biobasedworld.de 30 • November/December 2016

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air emissions Bioenergy Ten years of methane emission measurements in Sweden

The case of a decade

I

n biogas plants, where biological treatment of organic matter by anaerobic digestion (AD) is performed, as well as in plants for upgrading of biogas to vehicle fuel quality, there might be emissions to air in different parts of the plants. There are mainly four reasons why these emissions should be minimised.

These are safety reasons, global environment, local environment, and economic reasons. With this in mind, Swedish Waste Management (Avfall Sverige) introduced the Voluntary Agreement for biogas plants in 2007, where the participating plants commit to work systematically to identify and reduce their methane emissions.

One important part of the Voluntary Agreement is to have emission measurements performed at the plants to determine their methane emissions and losses. These measurements are generally performed once every three years. Measurements and calculations of methane losses have now been completed at participating plants over three consecutive three-year periods: 2007-2009, 20102012, and 2013-2015. The number of participating biogas plants have increased from 18 to 20 and finally 25 during the different three-year periods. Similarly, the number of participating upgrading plants have increased from 20 to 28 in the last two periods.

The results from these measurements and insight to the development over time and differences between different types of plants have recently been published in an Avfall Sverige report.

In the report, the results

Bioenergy Insight

from the third measurement period (2013-2015) are presented. All results are expressed as percentage losses relative to the gas produced and measured in the plant. The results are reported in the fomat of different categories of plants and the mean value of the plants is also reported.

measurement is scaled up to correspond to the annual emissions from the plant. This is especially important for the digestate storages. A strong negative correlation has been found between the measured methane losses and the amount of methane produced annually, i.e. larger plants have lower relative losses.

Gas production plants

Upgrading plants

For gas production plants, the categorisation has been made according to the type of plant. The mean value losses for sewage sludge treatment plants are 2.5 % and for

For upgrading plants the categorisation has been made according to the technique used for the separation of carbon dioxide: chemical scrubbers, pressure swing

Voluntary Agreement

The Voluntary Agreement system has had a major impact on the Swedish waste management sector co-digestion plants 1.1 %.

Digestate handling contributes to a major part of the losses.

There is a large spread in the results in both categories.

Methane losses are generally higher for plants within the sewage sludge treatment category than for plants in the other category. The proportion of the total losses coming from losses in digestate handling varies between significant and insignificant.

In the third measurement period losses from digestate storage have in all cases been measured, but the different designs of the plants and systems (sometimes with storages off-site) impact the results. One of the major uncertainties in the measurement results come from when a single

low as 10-20ppm inside these areas, and where there are significant leaks the levels inside may be as high as 500-5000ppm.

The results have been further categorised. Category A includes chemical scrubbers and plants equipped with an RTO unit (mean value 0.17%).

Category B includes water scrubber and PSA plants, with no RTO unit (mean value 1.6%). For category B, a negative correlation is indicated between the measured methane losses in the off gas and the amount of methane produced annually, i.e. larger plants have lower relative losses.

adsorption (PSA), and water scrubbers. Regenerative Thermal Oxidizer (RTO) is another category that consists of the PSA and water scrubber plants that have been equipped with units that oxidise the methane emissions in the off gas, socalled regenerative thermal oxidation units. The mean value losses are 0.17% for chemical scrubbers, 0.16% for RTOs, 0.97% for PSAs, and 1.7% for water scrubbers. The off gas usually contributes to the majority of the losses.

Ventilation losses have been identified at several plants.

Losses in the ventilation come from leakages in process equipment inside the ventilated area. It is usually possible to reach concentration levels as

The Voluntary Agreement system has had a major impact on the Swedish waste management sector and helps to reduce methane emissions from this sector. However, there are still a number of AD plants, primarily those treating sewage sludge, that have not joined the system. Overall, however, the knowledge of methane emissions is far higher in the waste management sector than in other sectors in Sweden where production and upgrading of biogas takes place. Measurement data from the Voluntary Agreement has been used to define default values given in the Swedish gas industry’s calculation tool for sustainability criteria for biofuels. l

For more information:

This article was written by Magnus Andreas Holmgren, project manager at SP Technical Research Institute of Sweden. Visit: www.sp.se

November/December 2016 • 31

Bioenergy gasification How agricultural producers can turn the massive amounts of manure from their farms into green energy — and profit

The modern pollution problem

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n recent decades, raising livestock has shifted to large professional farms. At these places, with thousands of cattle or hundreds of thousands of chickens, the old selfcontained cycle of farming — manure feeds the crops, then the crops feed the animals — is overwhelmed by the large amount of manure and/or litter. Animal manure has become the modern pollution problem.

Too much manure causes many problems. A lactating dairy cow, for example, can produce 50 to 60kg of manure per day, and 20 broiler chickens will produce almost 2kg a day. Besides the pervasive smell, the manure is a growing source of gases, such as methane and carbon dioxide. It washes into streams and waterways, and gives off air pollution.

When too much manure and/or litter is produced, there is no cost-effective way to either use it productively or dispose of it at the moment.

While government regulation and better manure and/or litter management practices can make a difference, animal manure is and will continue to be an issue. But it also offers opportunities.

Innovations help Apart from regulation, there are some other innovations that may help control the potential problems associated with animal manure and/or

When too much manure and/or litter is produced, there is no cost-effective way to use it

litter. While feed additives are a creative way to address some problems, ultimately they do nothing to address the fact that there is simply too much waste being produced in some areas.

Eliminating E. Coli bacteria does nothing to address the problems of harmful gases or the detriment high

eliminate the solid manure and/or litter that still must be stored and discharged, nor do they protect against leaks or overflows that can contaminate water supplies.

At large farms, where animals are allowed to graze in the meadow, much of their manure is excreted

Gasification is an economical, ecological, and ergonomic way of handling manure concentrations of manure (and therefore nitrogen and phosphorous) have on the environment and human health. While AD plants can partially reduce the discharge of harmful gases, they cannot

32 • November/December 2016

directly onto the land, serving as a fertiliser and recycling nutrients back into the soil. But most of the times there is more manure available than the soil can absorb. Turned into fertiliser

pellets, sterilised manure can be safely applied to fields without the worry that pathogens could contaminate the produce. In addition to some growing interest in using manure for energy production, farmers are monetising it in the form of organic fertilisers that can be shipped around a country.

A manure revolution A new way of solving the manure problem has now come up in the form of an energy-based environmental solution called gasification.

Many products are suitable for gasification, including poultry litter/manure, porcine and cattle manure, sludge, and biosolids. Through the use of readily available

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gasification Bioenergy technologies, the resulting clean heat can be converted into a number of usable energy forms like steam, electricity, hot water and hot air.

Yield from the gasification process includes valuable energy and formulated EcoChar that is significantly (more than 85%) reduced in bulk from the original material. The formulated EcoChar is dry, pathogenfree, has a commercial value, and can be more easily transported. Based on the characteristics of the fuel being gasified, EcoChar has variable qualities.

How it works Gasification is a chemical reaction caused by heating material in an oxygen-starved environment. The main product of gasification is carbon monoxide (CO), with some hydrogen and methane gases, called synthesis gas (Syngas).

The syngas composition is fuel dependent, with temperatures typically ranging between 800850°C. Once the syngas leaves the gasifier and flows into the oxidiser, ambient temperature air is introduced to combust the syngas, with the CO being converted to carbon dioxide (CO2). The combustion process produces a gas stream (energy content between 5.5-6.1MWth) of about 980 to 1080°C. The main component of the gasification technology is a down-draft fixed-bed gasifier. This patented design is generations ahead of wood-fuelled systems and is engineered to support a variety of fuels, including manures and other biomass.

The gasification process takes place in the primary unit, in an oxygen-starved environment, thus controlling NOx (nitrogen oxide) formation. The low-pressure system allows for gasification with no or minimal carryover of particulate matter from most fuels.

The ability to use the thermal energy product as

Bioenergy Insight

• Possibility of electricity generation can easily go to 1MW or more

It also has a variety of other uses, including animal feed supplements and use as a water filtration medium. Sustainable EcoChar is a powerfully simple tool to fight global warming.

It converts agricultural manure and/or litter into a soil enhancer that can hold carbon, boost food security, and discourages deforestation.

EcoChar is one of the few technologies that is relatively inexpensive, widely applicable, and quickly scalable. The market for EcoChar is currently being developed.

• For many processes saves 95% of the fossil fuel required

The company

Main advantages of gasification: • Solves litter/manure/organic manure and litter/sludge challenges • Reducing volumes up to 85% • Handles up to 55 tonnes of litter/manure per single unit per day (20-30% moisture) • Reduces CO2 emissions of the farm to improve carbon footprint • High energy content of the hot air can be used for various applications • Possibility of high capacity steam generation (7.7 tonne steam at 10 bar)

• Produces high quality EcoChar as end product

direct heat, steam (up to 7 tonnes, 10 bar/hour), or electricity (up to 1.1MW net) is a simple matter of adding equipment. The modular design makes construction quick and relatively easy, and the addition of components is comparatively simple.

Gasification is often confused with incineration, although they are totally different processes. Incineration is the actual combustion or burning of solid fuels, which takes place at higher temperatures, combusts the material completely, and does not produce a carbon-rich EcoChar.

The gasification system features web-based remote control, allowing off-site operation of the system if desired. This provides tremendous flexibility and oversight to the owner, and the ability for real-time troubleshooting that can eliminate downtime. The system has PLC controls, which can be interfaced to most existing systems, and provides a wide range of flexibility in operating parameters and the ability to control the system to provide the proper amount of energy for the customer’s needs — both when and where they need it.

Gasification is an economical, ecological, and ergonomic way of handling manure, litter, and organic manure and/ or litter challenges, while targeting at a total supply cycle system and multiple revenue streams. It could be one of the answers to our future energy needs that will result in reduced air pollution and a reduction in the agricultural manure and litter problems.

A powerful soil enhancer The ability to control the operating parameters of the gasification technology allows it to produce various grades of EcoChar, which offers significant economic and environmental value to projects. EcoChar is a solid material obtained from the carbonisation of biomass.

This carbon-rich material has high value of P, K, Ca and Mg (potassium, phosphorous, calcium and magnesium).

Furthermore, EcoChar is valuable for improving stability in soil as it is retained in the soil over many hundreds of years, unlike fertilisers which typically require annual application, and due to its superior nutrientretention properties. It thus provides benefits to both the environment and agriculture.

Mavitec Green Energy is a Dutch solutions-based company providing answers and resolutions for businesses that have large quantities of by-products, biomass, or other fuel sources. Together with its partner Coaltec, Mavitec offers a complete solution to gasify organic streams into a number of usable energy forms (including heat, steam, and electricity) and high quality EcoChar through the use of readily available technologies. The company aims to integrate gasification technology into agriculture and industry through conversion of available fuels.

Mavitec Green Energy is part of the Mavitec group, a privately-owned company.

Mavitec also supplies raw material handling systems for the biogas and biodiesel industry. With headquarters based in the Netherlands, it has international sales/ service offices worldwide.

The solutions that Coaltec and Mavitec bring to their customers are complimentary and help provide a more complete solution to many of the issues facing agricultural companies throughout the world. l For more information:

This article was written by Maco van Heumen, managing director, and Manja Weppner, marketing director at Mavitec Green Energy. Visit: www.mavitecgreenenergy.com

November/December 2016 • 33

Bioenergy air emissions Are methane emissions from biogas production a problem?

Questionable emissions

A

primary motivation of anaerobic digestion (AD) is to produce methane from biogenic sources and use this as a versatile renewable fuel. There are various potential sources of methane leakage in the process of biogas production, some of which are unavoidable and some that can be managed and mitigated.

For example, safety valves or vents are features installed on biogas plants that allow gas to escape at high pressures or volumes.

This would be an unavoidable source of methane emissions.

In contrast, a biogas engine that is not combusting all of the methane or an inefficient biogas upgrading process are examples of methane loss that can be managed.

There are a wide range of values quoted in literature for methane loss from biogas production. This has led to a concern from some stakeholders, such as policymakers and regulators, that fugitive emissions could be an issue for the AD industry.

The uncertainty is quite high due to only a limited amount of published data, issues around consistent methods to measure emissions, differences in facility operation, and the reality that emissions measurement only provides a “snapshot” in time.

The impact of methane emissions is also high with a 1% loss being approximately 5gCO2-e per MJ of biogas. To put this in context, the EU uses a fossil fuel comparator of 87gCO2-e per MJ for the average greenhouse (GHG) emissions from the fossil mix of heat. Natural gas has a lower footprint of 65-75g CO2-e per MJ, so it can be

seen that if methane losses are 6% or higher, then 60% GHG savings against natural gas are not achievable.

Four measurements

So what are the typical methane losses from a biogas facility? Unfortunately, the answer is not straightforward as it depends on the site design, operating parameters, equipment, and other factors. Perhaps the best reference is the Swedish Voluntary Agreement

plant (2MW CHP), factory waste (500kW CHP), and large-scale crop biomethaneto-grid injection.3 The measurements reveal that there are a number of minor sources of leakage at each site, but the more important sources are digestate storage, incomplete combustion in combined heat and power (CHP) engines, and methane slip during biogas upgrading.

Results show emissions from biogas production range from 0.1% loss through to 1.5% with an average of 0.6%. CHP

No common European standard is established to measure the overall emission rates of methane from biogas plants scheme1 as this has applied a consistent methodology to the direct measurement of fugitive emissions over the last ten years.

Results from 2013-2015 show that wastewater and food waste biogas plants average 2.5% and 1.1% loss respectively, with individual plants ranging from close to zero up to 5.5%.2 For biogas upgrading, methane slip ranges from almost zero up to 4%, with the upgrading technology having a strong influence on losses. Chemical scrubbers perform much better than water scrubbers in terms of methane loss.

Recent UK research performed in collaboration between the University of Bath, EPSRC Supergen Bioenergy Hub, and SP Technical Research Institute of Sweden tested methane losses on four UK sites: smallscale farm digester (250kW CHP), wastewater treatment

34 • November/December 2016

exhaust gas emissions ranged from 0.3% to 5.3% with an average of 2.7%. Only one site had a biogas upgrading process that had a measured methane loss of 0.7% using membrane technology.

A key finding from all of the research undertaken on methane loss is that fugitive methane emissions vary with time and operational performance. If not well managed, methane loss can lead to GHG emissions that do not meet sustainability criteria, which puts the financial viability of the AD plant at risk. In the UK for example, mandatory biomass sustainability regulations are in place that mean AD operators must achieve a minimum 60% GHG saving.

No current standard Methods for the measurement of methane loss are on the way to being standardised.

There is a current ERA-NET Bioenergy programme project called MetHarmo4 whose aim is to harmonise the methods to quantify methane emissions from biogas plants. To date, no common European standard is established to measure the overall emission rates of methane from biogas plants.

So, to address the question “Are methane emissions from biogas production a problem?”, the answer really depends on the accuracy of the methodology employed for the measurements, and most importantly how the individual facility is operated. The range in results for methane loss measurements shows that this is a site-specific problem that can only be mitigated by individual plant operators being proactive on the issue.

The two biggest motivations for managing methane loss are the economic driver, i.e. lost methane equals lost revenue, and biomass sustainability criteria, i.e. high methane loss will mean individual sites don’t meet the GHG criteria. l

For more information:

This article was written by Paul Adams and Marcelle McManus at the University of Bath, and Magnus Andreas Holmgren at the SP Technical Research Institute of Sweden. Visit: www.bath.ac.uk/mech-eng/research/ sert/people/adams/ or www.sp.se/en

References:

1 http://www.iea-biogas.net/ case-studies.html?file=files/datenredaktion/download/case-studies/ Case%20Study%20Sweden.pdf 2 http://www.avfallsverige.se/ rapporter/rapporter-2016/201618/ 3 Adams et al. 2016. Measurement of fugitive methane emissions and assessment of UK biogas and biomethane facilities compliance with biomass sustainability criteria.

European Biogas Conference, Ghent, Belgium, 27-28 September 2016.

4 https://www.dbfz.de/ index.php?id=1082&L=0

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November/December 2016 • 35

Bioenergy air emissions European researchers assess methane emission measurements

A

major key point for further acceptance of biogas technology is adequate monitoring and the minimisation of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The first step towards proper emission management at an anaerobic digestion (AD) plant is reliable quantification of its GHG emissions, the most important and hazardous of which within the biogas sector is methane. To date, there are no European standards stipulating how the overall methane emission rate of a biogas plant should be determined and the available methods deliver results that are not always comparable.

To close this gap, a group of European researchers from the UK, Austria, Denmark, Germany, and Sweden met in October in Northern Germany to address the measurement of methane emission rates in a joint measurement campaign, which is part of the MetHarmo project, funded by the EU. The aim of the project is to establish standard methods for quantifying methane emissions, resulting in a joint practical guideline and strategies for emission mitigation.

The guideline will include recommendations for reliable determination of methane emission rates, and also shows the advantages and shortcomings of different measurement methods and defines ways to handle the results of different methods so that they are comparable to each other.

This knowledge will be transferred to the European biogas community and can help public authorities in

Two TDLAS systems measuring methane emissions in a field near an AD plant

ranking different methods and formulating regulations.

Challenges One challenge in determining methane emission rates is the variety of emission sources in one plant. There can be continuous point sources, such as unknown leakages on digester roofs, gas bearings, and exhaust pipes or gas utilisation devices, but also sources like open digestate storage tanks or temporal sources like the emissions from pressure relief valves.

If the methane emission sources in an AD plant are many, then so are the techniques used to determine methane emission rates. Generally, one can differentiate between on-site methods that determine emissions directly at the single sources and remote sensing methods, where the measurement is performed at a greater distance from the source.

Of course, both methods have their upsides and downsides. With the onsite methods, it is possible

36 • November/December 2016

to identify single sources, deliver very precise measurements of their methane emission rates, and investigate their contribution to the overall emissions.

This is very important for improving the economic efficiency or the ecological compatibility of the AD plant. The determined single emission rates can be added to the overall methane emission rate. However, when compared to the remote sensing methods, the on-site methods can be very time consuming, depending on the size of the plant and the number of potential emission sources.

With remote sensing methods, it is possible to measure the methane emission rate of the whole AD plant, including all emission sources simultaneously. The time consumed by these methods is independent of plant size, and remote sensing methods can be used very well for continuous measurements and monitoring of time-independent emissions. The problem with remote sensing, however,

is that it is dependent on particular weather conditions.

Comparing the methods Within the MetHarmo project, two teams, one from Deutsches Biomasseforschungszentrum (DBFZ) in Germany and one from SP Technical Research Institute of Sweden (SP), aim to determine the methane emission rates by on-site methods. The teams’ method consists of firstly identifying the single sources, and then determining the methane emission rates.

Additionally, a team from bioenergy2020+ in Austria performs biogas potential tests on digestate from AD plants.

Five teams are involved with remote sensing methods. A very common remote sensing method is the use of tunable diode absorption spectrometry (TDLAS), applied by two teams from Germany (DBFZ and University of Stuttgart) and one team from the Institute of Waste Management, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences (BOKU) in Austria.

Here, the integrated methane

Bioenergy Insight

Š Carsten Tilch (DBFZ)

Setting the standards

air emissions Bioenergy measurements of acetylene and methane, the total methane emissions of the plant can be determined.

Another, but more expensive remote sensing method is the use of differential absorption light detection and ranging (DIAL) carried out by researchers from the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) in UK. With this method, single emission plumes can be identified and quantified simultaneously, which gives valuable information for the use of the cheaper measurement methods.

A comparison of the different methods is very important for future reliable determination of methane emission rates. It will show how the different methods lead to comparable results that can then be used for standards by public authorities and can help

© Torsten Reinelt (DBFZ)

concentration over a path downwind of the AD plant is determined, and subsequently the overall methane emissions of the plant are calculated by inverse dispersion modelling.

The TDLAS measurement systems are built by Boreal Laser, Canada, which is also project partner within the MetHarmo project and supports it with measurement equipment and know-how.

A fourth remote sensing measurement team from the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) releases a determined amount of tracer gas, like acetylene, into the AD plant. The concentration of methane and simultaneously acetylene is then determined by cavity ring-down spectroscopy (CRDS) sensors moving with a car in the downwind area of the AD plant. By comparing the results of the concentration

A pressure relief valve of a biogas storage tank fitted with explosionproof temperature sensor to monitor the triggering of the valve

make biogas technology more efficient and accepted.

Within the MetHarmo project, two workshops concerning methane emission measurements and also a presentation of the project results have been organised.

The first one took place in Leipzig in August 2016,

and the second one will be hosted in Malmö, Sweden, in spring 2018, organised by Energiforsk. Interested parties are welcome to register. l For more information:

This article was written by Tina Clauss, scientist at DBFZ and DBFZ co-authors Torsten Reinelt and Jan Liebetrau. Visit: www.dbfz.de

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November/December 2016 • 37

Bioenergy company profile An innovative ultraclean syngas process is set take bioenergy forward

Roll on wood

S

wedish cleantech company Cortus Energy develops and markets a biomass gasification process called WoodRoll. WoodRoll is a breakthrough technology with a number of distinct technical solutions that are different from traditional gasification processes. Traditional gasification or state-of-the-art gasification is characterised by a number weaknesses.

For instance, the traditional process has been designed for specific types of feedstock that need pretreatment. The syngas also needs to be cleaned from tar. Gas cleaning is expensive and requires a lot of energy to do, which results in a low yield. All in all, state-ofthe-art biomass gasification cannot deliver a compelling renewable energy solution.

The WoodRoll process is a three-step innovation in which the process steps — drying, pyrolysis, and gasification — interact but are physically separated from each other. This is one major difference compared to state-of-the-art gasification.

Other significant differences are included in figure one.

The WoodRoll process has been assessed by a number of international consultancy companies and has been classified as “beyond state

of-the-art”. The WoodRoll solution creates a number of important advantages including the following: • Feedstock flexibility and enabling the use of local lowgrade (and cheap) biomass, which is a key parameter in building a solid business case. Typical feedstocks that are feasible for WoodRoll are forest products and residues, agricultural and industrial waste like glue- or paint-contaminated wood chips, and various types of sludge like fibre sludge from a pulp mill. Feedstock with a moisture content of up to 4045% can be handled without any need of pretreatment.

• Ultraclean syngas free from tar impurities directly from the gasification, which eliminates the need of costly downstream gas cleaning equipment.

• High efficiency, typically 80% of the energy from the biomass is converted into syngas.

• Favourable gas composition (relation H2:CO) to further refine the syngas into other energy products, such as ethanol, synthetic natural gas (SNG), renewable hydrogen, or biodiesel.

The WoodRoll process has been developed at laboratory, pilot, and demonstration scales. A 500kW gasifier has

State-of-the-art gasification

Typical applications for WoodRoll • Syngas can replace fossil to renewable natural fuels used in high intensive gas (SNG or biomethane) energy processes, such as that is injected into the steel mills, lime kilns, or gas grid. Up to 80% of paper mills. Syngas is also the syngas is converted used as green feedstock in to SNG (and 10% heat the petrochemical industry. can be recovered).

• The syngas is fed into a gas • The syngas is upgraded engine (cogeneration set) to renewable hydrogen that generates renewable that is used in fuel cell power and heat in a soapplications for both called combined heat and stationary and automotive power (CHP) application. uses. Up to 90% of the • The syngas is upgraded syngas can be converted via a catalytic process into renewable hydrogen.

been in operation in testing campaign mode since 2011.

The complete demonstration installation in Sweden has been built up over the years. The first fully integrated process that generated an ultraclean syngas from wet biomass was performed in November 2015.

The first industrial WoodRoll size is set to 6MW syngas capacity. Such an installation needs to be fed with 36 dry tonnes of feedstock every 24 hours. In a CHP application such an installation would generate 2.4MW of renewable power and 3.5MW of heat.

The technology is based on set sizes and a modular design.

A WoodRoll plant consists of a number of different modules, WoodRoll

Need of feedstock Drying, sorting and strict particle pretreatment sizing

Sorting and moderate particle sizing (drying integrated)

Components that form the syngas

Pyrolysis gas including the tars and air or steam

Char and steam

Elimination of syngas impurities

After gasification

Before gasification

Internal generated energy that drive the process

Char

Pyrolysis gas including the tars

Residues

Char and ash

Ash only

Differences between WoodRoll and traditional gasification

38 • November/December 2016

one for each one or several process functions. The modules are manufactured and the process equipment is installed and fully tested at a dedicated factory in Sweden. Upon a full factory acceptance test the modules are sent to site, where they are assembled into a complete plant. The advantages with fixed sizes and a modular design include: • Drive quality improvements as built-up experience and competence is reused • Drive cost reductions as design and deliveries are repeated • Faster ramp up of delivery capacity • Minimal disturbance at project site • The technical lifetime of the plant is secured as the plant can be moved WoodRoll is a competitive renewable energy solution with potential to replace fossil energy in applications where a renewable alternative has been lacking.

For more information:

This article was written by Magnus Nelsson Folkelid, business manager at Cortus Energy. Visit: www.cortusenergy.com

Bioenergy Insight

opinion Bioenergy The Swedish bioenergy market is blazing the trail that the rest of the world can follow towards carbon neutrality

Sweden can be a world-leading bioeconomy

T

he forests of Sweden and Finland represent more than 30% of the EU’s woodland.

Both Nordic countries have the potential to act as pioneers in bioeconomy, leading the way and inspiring countries in the EU and around the globe. The Swedish government has undertaken several initiatives to develop a bioeconomy, aiming to strengthen the long-term policy ground rules that will steer away from dependence on fossil fuels and help advance successful industries that can create sustainable jobs.

However, Sweden has already introduced bioenergy on a large scale. From an 80% dependence on imported oil during the first oil crisis in 1973, Sweden has reduced the use of oil to below 30% today. Meanwhile, bioenergy has taken over as the main energy source, today accounting for 34% of total energy use. The transition has been the most profound in residential heating, where biomass and waste today account for 75% of the fuel supply in district heating.

Also, the forestry industry is almost totally weaned off fossil fuels. In total, renewable energy accounts for 52% of the total energy usage in Sweden, the highest share in the EU. Use of bioenergy has increased from 40TWh around 1980 to 140TWh today. The primary reason for this tremendous growth has been broad political support and the use of strong general incentives, like the Swedish carbon tax introduced in 1991.

There are more than 500 biomass heating plants in Sweden. They range from very

Bioenergy Insight

small to massive, with the largest of them all being the new 330MWth Fortum Värme wood-chip-fuelled combined heat and power (CHP) plant supplying bio-based heat to the city of Stockholm. But the Swedish government has higher ambitions and recently announced its aim for a 100% renewable energy system by 2040, and to be the first Western country with net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2045.

Recarbonising the transport sector The next step in the transformation is the transport sector. A large part of Sweden’s CO2 emissions come from transport. The production and use of biofuels in Sweden has increased substantially since the mid-2000s. The share of biofuels in the road sector for the first half of 2016 was 16.6%, the highest of all EU countries.

In addition, Sweden is unique in having both substantial volumes of low- and high-blend biofuels (neat fuels). The use of biogas in the automotive sector is also more widespread in Sweden than in other EU countries.

Biofuel markets are largely affected by political decisions.

The political driving forces in Sweden have been various, such as reducing dependence on oil, creating new jobs, and reducing CO2 emissions from the transport sector.

As the biofuels market is international, changes in individual countries or regions also affect the Swedish biofuel market.

The main biofuel today is biodiesel with FAME and hydrogenated vegetable oil (HVO), with HVO being the largest of all biofuels. Biofuels are exempt from taxation.

However, the market is harmed

by EU’s overcompensation rules where FAME from rapeseed is taxed. The cause is EU’s state aid rules which dictate that no biofuel can be cheaper than the fossil alternative. Sweden must as a result impose a tax on biofuels to make them less competitive. Together with the ILUC Directive, this has stopped investments and also led to lower production at existing biofuel plants.

With the dramatic fall in oil prices and cheaper petrol, this has harmed the E85 market as

taxes have not been adjusted accordingly. The sale of E85 stalled in 2012 and has since decreased significantly. Yet, biofuels have found other markets. Swedish-made ethanol is sold to Germany, as its efficiency in combating climate change is valued there at premium prices. Thus, it is essential that Sweden develops a long-term policy for biofuels which are technology-neutral in terms of subsidies, taxes, and equal in every way.

Novel technologies have been developed, aiming to convert forest residues into high-value biofuels.

The production potential from lignin pyrolysis and depolymerisation, organic catalysis, or biomass gasification is huge. However, there is a lack of substantial research and demonstration programmes for largescale biorefineries. Swedish authorities are now working on a steering mechanism for biofuels based on a reduction quota mandate, which would be long-term and facilitate much needed plant investments and biofuel industry development to meet the goals of a fossilfree transport sector by 2030. Svebio is taking an active part in bringing forth such a system, leading the way for other countries in Europe developing their respective biofuel markets in the transitory period before becoming fossil-free. l

For more information: Fortum Värme opened a biofuel-based CHP plant in Värtan, Stockholm, earlier this year

This article was written by Tomas Ekbom, programme manager of BioDriv at Svebio. Visit: www.svebio.se

November/December 2016 • 39

Bio-based chemicals can be made from starch and plant lipids

Bioenergy biochemicals

New trends and developments in bio-based chemicals

Unlocking an industry

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here is greater and greater recognition that we must move away from petroleumbased products to help maintain the world’s climate within a suitable range. The US, China, and 73 other countries have recently signed the Paris Agreement on reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. In the US, 81 major companies have signed an accord pledging drastic action on climate change, and even the Pope has issued a call for the world to act quickly to prevent climate change destroying the planet.

Yet petroleum is entrenched in our everyday life. How will we achieve a reduction in its use? Bio-based chemicals are potential contributors to better climate outcomes as they use biomass that has recently absorbed emitted carbon as a feedstock.

Virtually all petroleum-based chemicals can be made from biomass sources, but for many bio-based chemicals, economics are still a problem.

National Research Council of the National Academies (NRCNA) writes: “Today, we are at an inflection point.

The tremendous progress in biology over the past half century — from Watson and Cricks elucidation of the structure of DNA to today’s astonishing, rapid progress in the field of synthetic biology — has positioned us for a new round of innovation in chemical production.”1 Scientific basis Bio-based chemicals can be made from sugar, starch, and plant lipids and other natural sources of carbon.

Production of chemicals

today’s feedstock for biomanufacturing is fermentable sugars from starch. The continued expansion of biomanufacturing chemicals will require additional feedstocks from non-grain sources.

“Cellulosic biomass holds great promise as a feedstock from non-grain sources, but there are still many challenges associated with using recalcitrant cellulosic material in industrial biotechnology,” the report reads.1 To utilise biomass for renewable chemical production, it must first be

The Glycell process can produce cellulosic sugars at under $50 (€44.8) per tonne when co-products are included (alcohol in particular) from sugars via fermentation is one of mankind’s oldest industrial activities, with records dating back to 6000 BC. In the report entitled Industrialization of biology: A roadmap to accelerate the advanced manufacturing of chemicals, NRCNA states that

40 • November/December 2016

broken down by some form of pretreatment process into its components: cellulose, hemicellulose, and lignin.

The cellulose can then be converted to sugars using industrially available enzymes and the hemicellulose sugars recovered.

Given that often the

fermentable sugars are the largest single input and therefore the majority of production costs for the production of large volumes of bio-based chemicals, the NRCNA report states: “New technologies that would improve the release of sugars from wood would have significant value.” 1 New methods A new process that has significant potential for the production of cellulosic sugars is Leaf Resources’ Glycell process. The Glycell process is an innovative, proprietary technology that uses a low cost, biodegradable reagent glycerol from biodiesel production in a simple process that breaks down plant biomass into lignin, cellulose, and hemicellulose at low temperature and pressure. The cellulose is then converted to cellulosic sugars through enzymatic hydrolysis and the lignin, hemicellulose, and glycerol become valuable co-products.

The Glycell process can produce cellulosic sugars at under $50 (€44.8) per tonne

Bioenergy Insight

biochemicals Bioenergy

Leaf Resources managing director Ken Richards

when co-products are included.

This compares with $220 per tonne for sugars produced from the conversion of corn-starch, the cheapest alternative, and $280 per tonne for raw sugar. Because of the low temperature and pressure in the process and the chemistry involved through the glycerol, the Glycell process produces very clean sugars, which is a

valuable trait. By the cost of the main feedstock for biobased chemicals, plastics, and biofuels, the Glycell process has the potential to change the face of global renewable chemical production.

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), a laboratory of the US Department of Energy (DOE), recently looked at bio-based products with near-term potential and identified 12 of the better opportunities selected, considering: • Sufficient market volume and value • A well established and mature market • Feedstock flexibility • Avoidance of competition with natural gas • Chemicals that could be made at a lower cost from biomass compared to petroleum The biomass-derived products

they reviewed in the report included: 1,4-butanediol, 1,3-butadiene, ethyl lactate, fatty alcohols, furfural, glycerin, isoprene, lactic acid, 1,3- propanediol, propylene glycol, succinic acid, and para-xylene. Emerging products reviewed include adipic acid, acrylic acid, and furan-2,5-dicarboxylic acid.

The report states: “There are clear opportunities to positively impact the economics and sustainability of an integrated biorefinery by displacing/ replacing fossil-derived chemicals with bio-derived products and, in response, the market for bioproducts is expected to grow over the next several decades. Recent analysis projects the market share of bio-based chemicals in the global chemical industry will increase from 2% in 2008 to 22% in 2025.” 2 The future of renewable

chemicals is here with the Glycell process. This will not only have an impact on climate outcomes, as the US Academy of Sciences recently stated: “The industrialisation of biology and synthetic biology will be as important for the next 50 years as semiconductors and related information and communication devices have been to economic growth over the past 50 years.”1 l

For more information:

This article was written by Ken Richards, managing director at Leaf Resources.

Visit: www.leafresources.com.au

References:

1 Industrialization of biology: A roadmap to accelerate the advanced manufacturing of chemicals.

National Research Council of the National Academies 2 Chemicals from biomass: A market assessment of bioproducts with near-term potential. National Renewable Energy Laboratory

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November/December 2016 • 41

Bioenergy biomass to liquid Advanced catalysis technologies will help bring renewable energy production to the next level

To fuel the future

Maria Olea, professor in chemical engineering and catalysis at Teeside University

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s the world runs out of oil and gas, it urgently needs to find alternative fuel supplies. Research at Teesside University holds some of the answers. For the past ten years, Maria Olea, a professor in chemical engineering and catalysis, has been working on a number of research projects, which can be summarised as “advanced catalysis to sustainable technologies”.

Advanced catalysis means the combination of preparation, experiments, and simulations that brings catalytic studies from micro-and meso-level to macro-level or massive commercialisation. Examples include the conversion of biomass and municipal solid waste into fuel.

Developing sustainable technologies is a massive agenda, of course. Such innovation is needed to address the big challenges of the 21st Century, namely energy demand, resource

allocation, water, and pollution. By reducing energy and resources, this will help everyone protect the environment and to reuse/recycle resources.

Today, 80% of energy usage comes from fossil fuels such as petroleum, coal, and natural gas. While fossil fuels are still being created by underground heat and pressure, they are being consumed more rapidly than they will ever be regenerated.

Although there is no consensus for how long these natural resources will last, there is complete agreement that to avoid their complete depletion, renewable resources should be used.

Biomass, hydro, wind, solar, geothermal, marine, and hydrogen will unquestionably play an important role in the future. Biomass and waste, being readily available

routes is pyrolysis, which is a potential value-added technology for the treatment of biomass/organic waste, with the possibility of producing gases with appreciable fuel value, useful liquid oils, and agriculturally applicable biochar.

The development of catalysts with high activity and selectivity for sustainable catalytic processes was, and still is, a first priority for the Teesside team. As such, newly-developed technically advanced catalysts were prepared for several different applications.

One of these is the conversion of biogas (consisting of about 60% methane and 40% carbon dioxide) as produced by anaerobic digestion (AD) of municipal wastewater sludge into syngas (mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen).

Today, 80% of energy usage comes from fossil fuels such as petroleum, coal, and natural gas renewable energy sources that reduce sulphur dioxide and carbon dioxide emissions, are extremely attractive options as a fuel for power generation and as a raw material to be converted into transportation fuel.

Developed catalysts One of the main research streams at Teesside University’s School of Science and Engineering is the production of synthetic fuels via thermocatalytic routes, mainly biomass and waste-to-fuel routes. One of the main thermocatalytic

42 • November/December 2016

Nickel-based catalysts, supported on mesoporous silica, SBA-15, were designed, synthesised, and tested, and their activity was found to be higher than that of any other catalyst used so far for this conversion, known as dry reforming of methane.

This proven application is very important from both an environmental and economic point of view, as it converts two major greenhouse gases, methane and carbon dioxide, into synthetic fuel.

Syngas is already a synthetic fuel as it can be used in a gas engine to produce steam and electricity. However, to

comply with the engine’s specifications, syngas has to be cleaned. A different class of nickel-based catalysts were developed and scaledup (from mg to kg) for this application. This was the task of the University’s EUfunded Pyrochar (pyrolysisbased process to convert small wastewater treatment plant sewage sludge into useful biochar) project.

The Pyrochar project was supported by a consortium of SMEs and research centres dedicated to the design and development of a process to convert sewage sludge into useful biochar and synthetic gas. The catalysts were used in the pilot plant unit built by the consortium and proved to have better performance than the commercial catalysts used as benchmark catalysts.

The laboratory is one of the few in the world which is able to shape and scale-up catalysts without diminished activity as compared with the powder used for the shaping.

Conversion through FischerTropsch catalytic process of syngas into long-chain hydrocarbons that act as substitutes for diesel fuels also requires catalysts.

Although catalysts with high activity have been developed, the increase of their selectivity is still a challenge.

Therefore, the research team has concentrated its efforts on preparation and testing of new or newly-developed catalysts which were expected to have a high selectivity along with a high activity.

Cobalt and iron catalysts supported on a mesoporous silica support, i.e., SBA15, were obtained and characterised by different

Bioenergy Insight

biomass to liquid Bioenergy techniques (SEM/EDX, TEM, XRD, XAS, N2- adsorption isotherms, and Catlab, respectively). Some of these showed along a high activity as well as a high selectivity. In order for a better understanding of their structure-activity-selectivity relationship, temporal analysis of products measurements were performed during Olea’s research, which took her to the University of Tokyo.

For reconversion of waste polymers into chemicals and fuels, solid acid catalysts — mesoporous aluminosilicatesbased catalysts — were developed and they were proven again to have high activity. Catalysts have also been developed for the elimination of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) to improve the quality of indoor air. Mesoporous silica (SBA-15)-supported gold nanoparticles were developed and tested for different VOCs model molecules, showing high activity even at room temperature. This is a promising alternative to minimise energy consumption in catalytic reactions.

Converting carbon Utilisation of CO2 by chemical conversion is a valuable idea, which is envisaged to provide answers to other two burning questions of the 21st Century, namely global warming and fossil fuel depletion. Chemical conversion of CO2 into other useful chemicals not only provides a tangible solution to curb the ever increasing amount of greenhouse gases in the Earth’s atmosphere, it also serves CO2 as a cheap, abundant and natural C1 feedstock.

CO2 is a highly stable compound, which requires a substantial amount of energy for its conversion into other compounds. Several chemical conversions of CO2 are being studied under the field of heterogeneous

Bioenergy Insight

Olea and her chemical engineering team have established an international reputation for their work on hetergeneous catalysis

catalysis. Among them, dry reforming, tri-reforming, and polymerisation to polycarbonates and polyurethanes are the most environmentally benign conversions.

The biggest merit of CO2 polymerisation over other conversions is that it provides a non-phosgeneous route for the preparation of polycarbonates and polyurethanes (synthetic leather). Reaction of an alkyl halide with CO2 in the presence of NH3 is the most environmentallyfriendly conversion, which leads to the formation of organic carbamates, precursors of polyurethanes.

Vanadium-based catalysts, supported into MCM41 mesoporous silica, have being synthesised and their characterisation will follow.

The last, but by no means least application that Olea is involved with is the synthesis of heterogeneous catalysts for the conversion of waste oil into biodiesel. Ti-based catalysts, supported on mesoporous silica, SBA-15, have been prepared and the Teesside University research team hopes that they will have high activity and as

such, they will successfully replace the homogeneous acid/base catalysts, which are harmful for the environment when discharged.

Eyes on the future Olea and her chemical engineering team have established an international reputation for their work on heterogeneous catalysis in their quest to save the planet for future generations. They are now planning to develop catalysts for the conversion of pyrolysis oil into valuable chemicals. The nano-gold/ SBA-15 catalysts already developed have proved to be active for this foreseen catalytic process. Along with the catalyst’s development, the researchers are interested in modelling, designing, and building microreactors as one of the most significant process intensification alternative to be used by coating with the best catalysts developed as above.

Olea’s ultimate goal is “zero waste, zero emissions” and she is confident they are not far away from achieving that. Improved catalysts and processes for cost-effective conversion of

a wide range of feedstocks — including biomass, sludge from wastewater treatment plants, waste plastics, and waste oil — to a tailored range of gas and liquid fuels and chemicals, through mainly synthesis gas (syngas) chemistry, have been designed, developed, and most importantly proven.

However, Olea’s work does not end in the laboratory.

Through her teaching she is able to share her passion for saving the environment. She teaches both undergraduate and postgraduate students in reaction engineering, environmental and waste minimisation, process improvements, enzyme kinetics, and catalytic processes. Through this she is able to raise awareness on the environmental impact of individual day-by-day actions and to challenge students, who are also specialists and managers of the future, to adopt pollution prevention rather than pollution control and to opt for reuse/recycle rather than disposal. l For more information:

For more information on Professor Olea’s work, please visit https://www.tees.ac.uk

November/December 2016 • 43

Bioenergy pressure wave cleaning A new technology resolves fouling issues in biomass plants

Shocking power

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oiler cleaning in biomass power stations is essential if the plant is to keep running efficiently and without unplanned shutdowns. Online maintenance cleaning has been known to the industry in the form of manual detonation cleaning for over a decade. However, in the past few years fixed detonation cleaning systems, which are attached to the boiler, have been growing in popularity.

Known as shock pulse generators (SPG), they were invented in Switzerland in 2006. Since then, more than 250 units have been installed worldwide, mainly on newly built energy-from-waste power stations, but also in biomass power stations that suffer from the same problem, namely compacted ash fouling. The units can also be retrofitted to existing plants.

An SPG is a pressureresistant device that is fitted to the boiler. It creates a pressure wave from an automatically triggered combustion reaction, which is directed into the boiler, passing through a laval nozzle mounted on an external boiler wall. This generates a sound oscillation within the fouling and also vibrates the flue gas flow and the tubes so that compacted ash will fracture and drop into the plant’s ash removal system. The gas used is a combination of oxygen and methane/natural gas, which is ignited and combusted to create the pressure wave.

This process is automatically repeated at defined intervals, with a frequency of up to four times an hour. This keeps fouling

An SPG is a pressure-resistant device that is fitted to the boiler to a minimum by providing a constant level of cleaning.

SPGs are designed to replace manual online cleaning or automated cleaning that exists in plants already, such as soot blowers, rappers, sonic horns, and the like.

SPGs take up far less space than traditional cleaning devices, providing savings on steel and building materials when the plant is constructed.

When in Sweden One user that has found SPGs successful is the Kils Energi

plant in Sweden. The plant has an 8MW fluidised bed boiler, with an energy output of 40GWh and feedstock throughput of 15,000 tonnes of biomass, annually. The plant supplies electricity to 620 homes. Originally, the plant had been fitted with an Infraphone sound vibration cleaning technology, which failed to stop fouling. In fact, the plant had to be shut down frequently and unexpectedly almost every week. The plant runs on a mixture of non-hazardous Norwegian wood and domestic Swedish

wood that has undergone preservation treatment with chemicals or creosote, which makes it hazardous.

An SPG was installed in 2014. Jonatan Brunbäck, plant manager at Kils Energi, says: “The SPG has enabled us to reduce the number of off-line cleans per year by 80%, giving us very high plant availability.” The SPG is located in the second pass just above the first horizontal tube bundles and is operated at variable intervals — every two, four or eight hours — translating to about 7,000 cycles over a four-year period.

Bearing in mind that the SPG is a replacement for manual cleans, these have been reduced from 21 to only three a year. This is an enormous saving in manpower — the plant estimates this to be a reduction of some 500 hours a year, with the subsequent reduction in costs.

The plant has increased profits by 10% and with operating costs of the SPG at €5,000, the plant is very happy with the investment. “Our SPGs have improved efficiency and paid for themselves in two years of operation,” Brunbäck explains.

Removing blowers

Since 2006, more than 250 SPG units have been installed worldwide

44 • November/December 2016

With more than 250 of the units installed worldwide, the SPG is becoming an accepted part of biomass plant design, with many OEMs now incorporating the units in the new build plants that are being constructed to follow the new environmental direction of reducing carbon.

The other advantages of SPGs are that they can replace soot blowers, which has been achieved very successfully in

Bioenergy Insight

pressure wave cleaning Bioenergy above the evaporator bundle and the six soot blowers in the economiser were removed. Furthermore, the SPG in the economiser is only operated every 24 hours.

Technical details

Shock pulse generator design

the Silbitz biomass power plant in Eastern Germany, operated

by PNE Biomass since 2003.

The Silbitz plant generates 5.6MW of electricity and 39.66GW of heat a year.

Heavy fouling used to be a problem in the first radiation pass and in the superheater bundle. In 2011, four SPGs were installed at the plant, initially in conjunction with the existing cleaning systems.

In the first radiation pass, the SPG prevented the buildup of large deposits of fouling on the walls of the pass.

Before installing the SPG, this fouling would build up so much that its size meant discharge via the deslagger was impossible, particularly

if the material became loose, in which case the plant would have to shut down.

The two SPGs in the first and second pass improved the cleaning of the two radiation passes, which meant that the flue gas passed into the superheater at lower temperatures, making the deposits less sticky and therefore easier to clean. Use of soot blowers in the third pass was reduced significantly due to the lower flue gas temperature and the cleaning effect of the SPG located below superheater one.

During the first six weeks of operation following offline cleaning, the soot blowers were switched off, and those

So what are the economic effects of an SPG? Not only do they avoid the need for online cleaning or unplanned shutdowns, but electricity production is increased by 2% as there is less steam being diverted to the soot blowers.

Also, less demineralised water has to be prepared, the flue gas humidity decreases, and the induced draft requires less power. Finally, it was noticed that there was less damage to the steam generator and that the service life of the wall and bundle surfaces was extended. Overall, the plant gained improved operating functionality and increased profitability by installing SPGs. And how does it work?

Initially in standby mode, the SPG has natural gas and oxygen tanks that are filled to a preset pressure. The nitrogen pressure presses the piston against the valve seat, keeping the empty combustion

chamber sealed. During “filling mode” upon the start of the cycle, once enabled by the PLC controller, the filling valves open, the dosing tanks are filled to a set pressure, and the valves close. At this point, the two gases are completely separated from each other and are therefore non-combustible.

The next step is “transfer mode”. The transfer valves open and the two gases flow via non-return valves and flame backstroke barriers, where they are mixed and then enter the main and precombustion chamber. “Ignition mode” is then started and the glow plug is activated, igniting the mixture in the pre-combustion chamber. The expansion of gases forces the piston away from the valve seat. By the time the piston has retracted, the flame from the pre-combustion chamber has travelled to the main combustion chamber igniting the main gas mixture, which generates a shock pulse or pressure wave of 350 bar.

The shockwave is directed through the valve seat and discharge nozzle into the boiler. The pressure wave then enters the boiler, initially in a linear fashion and then spherically, cracking and removing fouling as it disperses. At the end of the cycle, the gases have been fully discharged from the combustion chamber and the nitrogen pressure forces the piston to close against the valve seat, re-sealing the unit. The SPG is then returned to standby mode until the next cycle.

There is no doubt that this innovation brought to biomass plants will allow much greater efficiencies in the future by keeping fouling to a minimum and maintaining long running times. l For more information:

Shock pulse generators were invented in Switzerland in 2006

Bioenergy Insight

This article was written by Robin Buller, director of business development at KRR ProStream.

Visit: www.krrprostream.com

November/December 2016 • 45

Bioenergy circular economy The global nutrient recovery market is definitely not going in circles — the problem is that it should

Bringing it back to the fields

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iomass is still the most important source of renewable energy, even if the term renewable may not be correct due to widespread unsustainable use of biomass. Apart from cutting fresh timber without properly taking care of planting new forests, even countries with high environmental standards do not properly manage the nutrients that energy crops take up from (fertilised) soils and store in the biomass.

When the biomass energy is converted to methane, heat, and electricity, nutrients are either released to the air like nitrogen or concentrated in the ash like phosphorus and potassium.

The recent European strategy towards a circular economy and similar initiatives in other parts of the globe justify a closer look into the available options for more sustainable nutrient management. In intensive agricultural systems, nutrients are added to cropland in the form of organic or inorganic fertilisers. If organic substrates are converted to biogas and electricity in anaerobic digesters, a part of the organic carbon is converted to methane, hydrogen, and CO2. Nitrogen (N) is partly released to the air and partly bound to the digester effluent, which is widely used as an organic fertiliser.

However, this practice entails a lot of problems.

Firstly, the N:P:K (nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium) nutrient composition of effluents does not meet the N:P:K composition that crops need. Secondly, additional losses of nitrogen during

storage and handling of the digestate is a challenge.

Thirdly, concentration of livestock and digesters in certain European regions (mainly the Northwest part of Europe) causes issues.

This concentration leads to regional nutrient oversupply and excessive losses to inland and coastal waters with high nitrate levels in ground waters, eutrophication, algae blooms and extended Dead Sea areas as the avoidable consequences.

Importance of nutrient recovery The environmental damages are avoidable by implementing one of the recently developed nutrient recovery processes.

Facilities converting biomass to energy offer numerous opportunities to recover nutrients. Anaerobic digesters may be equipped with ammonia strippers, allowing them to recycle 50-70% of N to ammonium sulphate or ammonium nitrate. Each tonne of N recovered saves one cubic metre of natural gas for producing a reactive nitrogen fertiliser. Between 75%

and 90% of phosphates can be recycled to either an organic solid fertiliser or an inorganic magnesium-ammonium phosphate (struvite).

A number of anaerobic digestion (AD) plants in Europe and the Americas have implemented one or more of the above mentioned technologies and demonstrate that the technology risks are manageable. Consequently, a strong European consortium under the lead of research firm Alterra Wageningen has proposed a Horizon 2020 (EU R&D programme) demonstration project to open access of a wider stakeholder group to the know-how and practical experiences of innovation frontrunners.

If these processes are implemented without delay, the environmental footprint of biogas and thermal conversion plants can be reduced significantly.

If digestion effluents are combusted — a widespread practice for sewage sludge in Austria, Germany, the Netherlands, and Switzerland — nitrogen is lost if it had not been recovered at the

The Expert Group for Technical Advice on Organic Production (EGTOP) has recommended struvite and ASH DEC calcined phosphates for use in organic farming

46 • November/December 2016

digester plant. The good news is that phosphates (P) and potassium (K) are concentrated in the ash of sewage sludge or biomass-to-energy plants and both macronutrients can be recovered. Several technology suppliers, including Outotec, have in their portfolio one or more processes to recover P and K from nutrient rich ashes.

Currently technology providers pursue three different strategies: i) Producing a copy of the mainstream phosphate fertilisers with the different feedstock materials ii) Processing the secondary resources to new raw materials like elementary (yellow) phosphorus and purified phosphoric acid iii) Processing the secondary raw materials to fertilisers with different chemical characteristics and fertilising properties Whereas strategies i) and ii) mainly face processing and waste challenges, strategy iii) is facing the slackness of a conservative market hampering the chances of implementing the innovative technologies and placing the products on the market.

Renewable fertilisers of the third category were developed aiming at comparatively simple, economically-viable processes with a low environmental footprint and — in particular — no additional waste streams. Struvite, calcined ASH DEC phosphates and molten thermophosphates are the most prominent examples of products developed following this strategy.

These products have

Bioenergy Insight

circular economy Bioenergy There is an articulated need for a circular nutrient economy without pollution and waste

Nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium granules formed from Outotec’s ASH DEC process

features in common which may favour their application under sensitive climatic and soil conditions: • Zero water solubility • No acidity (pH=>7) • Possible to blend with urea and/or re-purposed, nutrient-rich wastes • Secondary and trace elements (Mg, Ca, S, Si, Zn) Glasshouse and field tests have provided robust evidence that on average European soils these products have similar effects on yield and P-uptake as conventional mineral fertilisers like DAP/MAP and TSP/SSP. Biomonitoring has proven the absence of toxic effects and chemical analyses have shown that heavy metal concentrations, in particular of cadmium (Cd) and uranium (U), are by an order of magnitude lower than in most rock-based phosphates.

A marketing challenge Taking these facts into consideration, the Expert Group for Technical Advice on Organic Production (EGTOP) has recommended struvite and ASH DEC (Outotec’s ash treatment process) calcined phosphates for use in organic farming, which may be seen as an appreciation of the

Bioenergy Insight

environmental benefits.

Regardless of all these benefits confirmed by the scientific community, the market has not reacted.

Traders claim the lack of demand, and farmers continue fertilising their cropland with conventional, water-soluble fertilisers. The need for change is obvious as the environmental costs of fertiliser inefficiencies are increasingly considered and motivating R&D for sustainable fertilisers.

Current phosphorus fertilisers are also a non-renewable resource mined from finite mineral deposits. There is an articulated need for a circular nutrient economy without pollution and waste.

One beautiful example shows that even conservative farmers may be convinced and fertilising practices may be changed. Ostara Nutrient Recovery Technologies of Vancouver, Canada, has heavily invested in talking to distributors and users, convincing them of the superior performance of its Crystal Green NP + Mg struvite. This will, however, remain a rare exception since NRR technologies have been developed by technology companies that

have only limited outreach to the fertiliser users and they usually do not have the financial backup needed for strong marketing campaigns.

It looks like venture and private equity investors in Europe do not see the need for marketing a product — superior technology is supposed to sell by itself.

Consequently, Outotec has decided to again pursue an alternative strategy supposed to overcome the current bottlenecks. The company aims to search and find the conditions where the properties of the new products can make a difference. This may not be in Europe, but since nutrients

are imported with soybeans and renewable fuels from the global South, nutrients may be sent back in the form of recycled fertilisers that — due to their special characteristics — are expected to work more efficiently on acidic and degraded soils than conventional ones. If that hypothesis holds true, the global nutrient loop may be closed and significant progress may be achieved by preventing nutrients from entering our aquatic bodies. l For more information:

This article was written by Ludwig Hermann, senior commercial product manager for metals, energy and water at Outotec. Visit: www.outotec.com

xergi.com

High quality large scale biogas plants Co-digestion of multiple feedstock 30 years experience Present in Europe, Asia, USA and Africa

November/December 2016 • 47

Bioenergy events & advert index Bioenergy events Event Venue Date Fri Mon Tue Wed Thu Sat 16-17 November 2016

1

2

European Bioenergy Future

3

4

Sun

Brussels, Belgium

5

6

7

8 December 2016

ADBA National Conference

London, UK

25-26 January 2017

Biogaz Europe 2017

Rennes, France

1-2 8 February 2017 9

10 Lingofuels 2017 11

12

13

Helsinki, 14 Finland

15-16 February 2017

Biobased World 2017

Cologne, Germany

27 February - 1 March 2017

3rd Biomass & Energy Asia

Jakarta, Indonesia

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

1-3 March 2017

WSED 2017 Wels, Austria

15-16 March 2017

Gasification 2017

28-30 March 2017

22

23

24

7th Nordic Wood Biorefinery

25

Helsinki, Finland

26

27

Stockholm, Sweden

28

10-12 April 2017

International Biomass Conference & Expo 2017

Minneapolis, USA

15-18 May 2017

8th Biomass Pellets Trade & Power

Tokyo, Japan

29

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www.balmoraltanks.com

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