Finnish company St1 inaugurates a waste-based ethanol plant in Gothenburg
The Finnish energy company St1 Biofuels Oy inaugurated on
5 June a waste-based ethanol plant with its Etanolix® concept. The plant
delivered to North European Bio Tech Oy (NEB) recycles biowaste and process
residue from local bakeries and bread from shops that is past its sell-by date
into ethanol for transport fuel. The ethanol plant is fully integrated into the
functions and logistics of St1 oil refinery in Gothenburg and has an annual
production capacity of 5 million litres of advanced bioethanol. This production
will be leased to North European Oil Trade Oy
(NEOT). NEOT is the sister company of NEB and it is the most significant
independent fuel supply company in the Baltic Sea region.
Figure 1. Ethanolix
waste-based ethanol plant in Gothenburg (extracted from www.St1.eu)
The Gothenburg
project was selected for inclusion in the Life+ programme of the European
Commission, which provides funding for projects on energy, climate,
environmental and waste management,... This project is the first in which an
ethanol production plant is being built and integrated at an existing oil
refinery to produce waste- and residue-based ethanol on a sustainable basis.
This is not the
only new from St1 in the last weeks. Recently, Novozymes announced a deal to supply
enzyme technology to a new biorefinery that will be built by St1 in Kajaani (Finland).
The facility will be co-located at a sawmill site and will be the first one in
the world to use sawdust from softwood as feedstock to produce cellulosic
ethanol at commercial scale. The plant will be constructed and operated using
the pre-treatment and the process technologies called Cellunolix®. With an annual capacity of 10 million liters,
the biorefinery represents an expected investment of around €40 million. Construction
is scheduled to begin in the second half of 2015, with production expected to
start in 2016.