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