Chemrec says US could produce 5B gallons of ethanol from pulp mill black liquor

In Sweden, biomass-to-energy company Chemrec was named among Europe’s most innovative and promising technology companies at this week’s European Tech Tour Cleantech Summit, and one of the Nordic 50 cleantech companies. The company utilizes a gasification technology to convert black liquor byproduct of pulp mills into renewable biofuels, biochemicals or power.

According to the company, its development plant in Piteå is the only gasification plant in the world producing high-quality syngas from 100% renewable non-food-crop feedstock, and will handle 500 metric tons of black liquor solids per day at full-scale, which the company says is an economically viable production rate.

Chemrec CEO Richard LeBlanc, writing in Biomass magazine , said that the US has up to 5 billion gallons in potential ethanol capacity per year from conversion of black liquor from pulp and paper mills, and said that adding ethanol production to a pulp and paper mill “completely alters a pulp mill’s competitive position by adding 30 percent to 50 percent of profitable revenue with the typical 25 percent to 40 percent internal rate of return.”

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