The main limitation of current gasification plants are the great amount of wastes needed to work properly, a typical gasification plant of 2 MW for MSW needs a feedstock of around 2.4 ton/h. This flow of raw material makes this technology very difficult to be implemented in other sectors with less quantity of wastes production, such as industrial wastes. This market demands a more flexible, modular and portable technology. Waste energy recovery in industrial sectors is an issue of great interest nowadays , due to the increase in energy costs and to the need of searching for alternative energy sources. Particularly, the pellet production is a process with a very high energy consumption, mainly due to the need of raw material drying, and with a waste product suitable for energy recovery. In total 1073 kW/ton are needed, being the chop mill and biomass drying the stages with greater consumption (around 650 kW/ton). This consumption presents a serious economic problem in the industry, since the energy costs are increasing over time but keeping constant the pellet price in the last 4 years. Nowadays, the electric energy consumption in a medium pellet plant, such as Nicepellets, means around €23/ton pellets produced with a production capacity of 15,000 - 20,000 ton/year, which represents an electric spending 345,000 – 460,000 €/ year. Besides, pellet plants typically burn a portion of 15-20% of their feedstock to provide heat for drying, which means less pellet and lower profitability. So, new electric profitable technologies customised to the manufacturing process and company facilities are needed to improve the competitiveness of these industries and ENERCOVERY will provide the key to solve this industrial need.
The general objective of this innovation project is to place in market a breakthrough energy technology for pellet manufacturing industries with high energy consumption that will allow valorising their wastes, currently with none or less economic value, by means of a portable gasification-CHP plant installed in their facilities. Additionally, the project development will help to solve a serious environmental problem caused by the excessive accumulation of wastes in landfills.
In order to reach this objective, the consortium will validate the study of this energy technology carried out in pellets manufacturing industries by scaling-down the gasification plant currently used for tens of tonnes per day of waste and optimise the functional parameters to the type of waste treated to ensure, at least the same, process yield. The new gasification plant will be modular and portable (20 ft standard container; 50% smaller than competitors) and represents a business opportunity to broaden the target market of Greene, currently focused on Municipal Solid Wastes (MSW) and forestry biomass, and the sales market of Nicepellets by producing ENplus pellets at a lower price than competitors. Besides, both companies will export together the validated energy model to other wood manufacturing industries, which will enable us to expand our current activities in the field of renewable energies. Additionally, the project development will help to solve a serious environmental problem caused by the excessive accumulation of wastes in landfills
Our goal is to confirm the economic advantages of the electrical and thermal energy produced by the implementation of a gasification-cogeneration heat and power (CHP) plant in the pellet manufacturing process. These advantages will result in the decrease of the energy costs during the process, from the current 23 €/ton to 15€/ton. This decrease in energy cost production will allow Nicepellets to lead the market of ENplus pellets producers and to differentiate from competitors in technologies and eco-efficiency. The overall system advantages and the actual fuel price situation, and environmental pressure on the transport sector to reduce emissions of combustion gases, presents a great business opportunity to introduce this technology in the market.
