Enerkem y Suez team up to set up a waste-to-methanol plant in Spain

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Type of post: NEWS IN BRIEF.

According to Spanish media, Enerkem and Suez are considering possibilities to set up a commercial biorefinery in Tarragona (“El Morell quiere invertir 250 millones de euros en una planta de transformación de residuos”, La Vanguadia, 9/5/2018).

The new facility will be based on the technology of Enerkem to transform non-recyclable waste into methanol. This process is already being successfully used in its Edmonton biorefinery, which has also a unit to generate ethanol from methanol (“Enerkem begins production of cellulosic ethanol from MSW at its Edmonton biorefinery”, 18/9/2017). It appears that the Tarragona plant will have a similar capacity to the new biorefinery that Enerkem together with a partners group are planning to build in Rotterdam (“Air Liquide, AkzoNobel, Enerkem and the Port of Rotterdam sign agreement to cover the initial investment of the Rotterdam waste-to-chemistry project”, 16/2/2018).

In the following table, the first data available on the project are summarized:
Name
Ecoplanta Molecular Recycling Solutions
Location
El Morell (Tarragona), close to the industrial site of Repsol.
Feedstock and processing capacity
375,000 tons of pretreated non-recyclabe wastes (mainly, plastic, paper and textile).
Products and production capacity
265,000 tons of green methanol.
Investment
It could be higher than 250 M€.
Employment effect
Construction stage: 700 jobs.
Operating: more than 200 jobs (direct and indirect).
Timeline
Request by the Integrated Environmental Authorisation (includes Technical Project and Environmental Impact Assessment,): May 2018.
Start-up: 2022.

Figure 1. Inaguration of the Enerkem Alberta Biofuels facility (extracted from Enerkem website)

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