Construction begins on the demonstration plant of the Fraunhofer TCR process



Type of post: NEWS.

The groundbreaking ceremony for the construction of a demonstration plant for the production of biofuels from sewage sludge took place early this month in Germany.

Location
Hohenburg in the district of Amberg-Sulzbach (Germany).
Feedstock and processing capacity
500 kg of dried sewage sludge per hour.
Products and production capacity
50 litres of biobenzine and biodiesel.
Funding
The demo plant is part of the EU project TO-SYN-FUEL, managed by the Fraunhofer Institute UMSICHT. A total of 12 M€ in funding will be available until 2020.
Timeline
Commissioning is planned for the beginning of 2020.

Figure 1. Ground-breaking ceremony in the Hohenburg Industrial Park

Technology

The TCR process (Thermo-Catalytic-Reforming), developed by the Professor Andreas Hornung together with Fraunhofer and Susteen (Fraunhofer spin-off), is a thermochemical conversion technology that can treat sewage sludge as well as a broad base of biomasses and residues (wood residues, fermentation residues from biogas plants, waste from beverage and paper production, municipal biowaste fractions). In addition to a high-quality bio-oil as an intermediate product for fuel production, the TCR process generates gas and biochar. Due to the high hydrogen content of the gas, it is also economically possible to carry out on-site hydrogenation of the oils and to produce fuels that comply with standards locally.

Decentralised concept

According to Andreas Hornung: “Our guiding principle is the decentralised refinery. This means that, compared to the petrochemical industry, we rely on comparatively small plants that produce the fuel where the waste biomass is produced. On the one hand, this results in fewer transports and, at the same time, we create new opportunities for local added value, for example in local communities or agriculture.”

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