System aspects of biomass use in complex applications: biorefineries for production of heat, electric power and chemicals - Biomass as Energy Source: Resources, Systems and Applications - page 135

CHAPTER 7
System aspects of biomass use in complex applications: biorefineries
for production of heat, electric power and chemicals
Erik Dahlquist & Jochen Bundschuh
7.1 TRADITIONAL USE OF WOOD
If we look back in history, biomass was first used as fuel for fire most probably. Thereafter people
started to use it to build shelters, as food and even for the manufacture of tools and production of
artifacts.
Since then, wood especially has been a very important material for manufacturing of houses,
ships etc., and during the last few hundred years also to produce different type of chemicals as
well as for the reduction of metal oxides to elementary metals.
During the last 100 years the focus has still been on manufacturing of furniture, building
houses and especially for manufacturing of paper and paper products. Today the total production
of paper and paper products is in the range of more than 400 million tonnes/year. Voith's CEO
Hans Peter Sollinger (2011) predicts 500 million tonnes of paper to be produced 2015! In Sweden
and Germany, huge amounts of biomass and organic wastes are used to produce district heat and
electric power in thermal power plants. Also in many countries pellets are much used in houses
for heating purposes.
In pulp mills, wood chips are digested with mostly sodium bi-sulfide (NaHS) or sulfite
(Na 2 SO 3 ). The first is mostly in Kraft pulp processes while the latter is mostly in CTMP plants,
Chemo Thermo Mechanic pulp, but also in sulfite processes.
During the last decade, we have seen a continuously increased interest to produce more textile
fiber from wood to replace synthetic fibers from oil as well as replace cotton. Together with
dissolving pulp, products like ethanol, lignosulfonates, vanilla and others chemicals are also
produced. Several existing batch digesters are converted into this type of production and from
being a primarily fiber producer the plants becomes more of biorefineries (Rødsrud et al. , 2012).
At Borregard in Sarpsborg, Norway, this has been the fact for quite a few years already, just
like at Domsjö, Örnskölsvik in Sweden.
7.2 USE OF WASTE ANDWOOD FOR CHEMICALS
In Kuopio, Finland, the plan is to make a biorefinery using organic wastes as the feedstock. In
China, Tiangang group in Nanyang has built a demonstration biorefinery using wheat, corn and
jatropha so far, but also with a smaller plant operating with straw as the feedstock (Chapter 9, this
topic). The reason is that a decision was made some years ago in China to not use what can be used
as food for energy purposes. Now ethanol is produced from the cereals, biogas from the residues
from the ethanol manufacturing and production of different chemicals from the ethanol. In 2012,
a decision was made by Henan province to produce 500,000m 3 bioethanol/y from straw by 2015,
and 3 million by 2020. Also 1000 million m 3 biogas will then be produced from the waste liquor.
The aim is to use the bio-ethanol for E85, and the biogas to feed into the NG-pipeline net.
The biogas is used in the natural gas net to feed households with heating gas. For that purpose
it isn't necessary to refine the gas, and the CO 2 can be left with the methane.
On the other hand, we have gone from only burning wood chips to producing heat by using it
in cogeneration to also produce electric power, and now for cooling and chemicals production.
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