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.
Press release: “Green
gasoline from sewage sludge: Ground-breaking ceremony for Fraunhofer
demonstration plant”, 8/11/2018.
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.”
