Empyro breaks ground on biomass pyrolysis oil production plant in The Netherlands

In The Netherlands, Theo Rietkerk (Representative Economy, Energy and Innovation of the Province of Overijssel) has placed a foundation pillar to mark the start of construction of the Empyro pyrolysis oil production plant, located at the AkzoNobel site in Hengelo (The Netherlands).

Construction will be complete by the end of 2014, and the project developers say that  production capacity will gradually increase to more than 20 million litres of pyrolysis oil (5.3 million US gallons) per year. This amount of renewable oil will replace 12 million cubic meters of natural gas, the equivalent annual consumption of 8,000 Dutch households, which saves up to 20,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions per year. Additionally, the project creates approximately 100 person-years of work in Overijssel.

Mr. Theo Rietkerk (Representative Economy, Energy and Innovation of the Province of Overijssel) marks the start of construction at the Empyro construction site.

The EMPYRO project – in full: Polygeneration through pyrolysis: Simultaneous production of oil, process steam, electricity and organic acids – started in December 2009. The main aim of the project is to build and demonstrate a 25 MWth polygeneration pyrolysis plant to produce electricity, process steam and fuel oil from woody biomass. The produced fuel oil can be used on-site, sold to a regional customer or exported.

The core conversion process is a flash pyrolysis plant based on BTG technology. In Europe, no commercial pyrolysis oil production plant is in operation. The plant will be based on the design and experience gained by BTG through the construction of a 50 tonne/day pyrolysis plant in Malaysia. The plant design will be further scaled up to a commercially attractive scale of 120 tonne/day (~ 25MW_th). The feedstock will be local woody biomass and/or residues.

The technical goals of the project are:

• To construct and operate on a continuous basis a 25 MW_th polygeneration pyrolysis unit.
• To determine the characteristics of the flash pyrolysis process.
• To provide warranty conditions for the process outcomes.
• To demonstrate the use of the pyrolysis oil in natural gas fuelled energy systems.
• To develop and demonstrate the pyrolysis oil stabilization process including the recovery of acetic acid.

The EMPYRO project is coordinated by BTG Biomass Technology Group B.V. The consortium consists of eight partners from three countries (The Netherlands, Germany, and Denmark). It was set up to gather all the complementary expertises required to reach the objectives of the project. BKR supplies the biomass feedstock to the plant. BTG, STQ, HoST and AK supply the technology and RRC contributes to the modelling and optimisation of liquid fuel combustion. BTL is responsible for the detailed design of the pyrolysis plant and BTG (via its affiliate Empyro BV) will be in charge the exploitation of the plant. AkzoNobel is the industrial end-user.

The EMPYRO project is financially supported by the 7th Framework Programme of the European Commission (Grant number 239357). It applied to the call for proposals FP7-ENERGY-2008-TREN-1; topic: High efficiency poly-generation – renewable energies for application in industry.

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Mr. Theo Rietkerk (Representative Economy, Energy and Innovation of the Province of Overijssel) marks the start of construction at the Empyro construction site.