Project description
Biomass pellets are rolling along thanks to an innovative mobile processing unit
Biomass is proving extremely beneficial in tipping the balance away from combustion of fossil fuels for the production of low-carbon energy. However, a tremendous volume of woody biomass that could be turned into pellets is currently wasted as its valorisation still relies on centralised processing. This means its collection and transportation by producers of small quantities is expensive and the cost of obtaining land and permits to create centralised processing units can be prohibitive. The EU-funded Proxipel project has developed a mobile pelletising unit that can process a variety of biomass types, including wet biomass, on-site where the biomass is generated. It promises to recover biomass that would otherwise be wasted while reducing the environmental impacts associated with biomass transformation.
Objective
The biopellet market is booming in Europe, and the production of wood pellets (main commercial product) has increased from 6-7 to 26 Mton/year in the period 2006-2015, and is expected to rise to 38 Mton/year in 2025, due to the general interest in substituting fossil fuel with CO2 neutral biomass. There is a need of solutions to utilise the potential of biomass residues currently available in forests, agriculture, agroindustry and parks, not being used today as it is too expensive to handle and process the feedstock. Our innovative solution consists in a mobile pelletizing unit, placed on a trailer that can be connected to a normal truck for transportation. This eliminates associated costs with buying land and obtaining building and permissions. The raw material is crushed, milled, dried, and pressed to biopellets. Our solution can handle a large variety of raw material, like straw, nut shell, rice husk, etc., although the main raw material is expected to be wooden residues. Only one operator is required, and the unit can produce up to 1.2 ton/h with a low energy consumption. Our first sales is expected to be in Switzerland and in France. By 2026, it is expected to have sold more than 400 units.
Fields of science
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
SME-1 - SME instrument phase 1Coordinator
1261 VAUD
Switzerland
The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.