Canada’s Canfor Pulp completed a joint-venture deal with Australian energy company Licella this week, and revealed plans to install a biocrude project at a new facility in Prince George, BC, where it hopes to produce 400,000 barrels of fuel per year from wood waste at its pulp mills. This facility is expected to cost around US$70 million.
Elsewhere, Sweden’s Fortum Värme, a company jointly owned by Finnish energy firm Fortum and the city of Stockholm, this week commissioned a new €500 million (US$569 million) biomass- red combined heat and power plant, which will begin operations in autumn. This facility will use forest residues and wood waste to produce district heat for nearly 200,000 households and its daily consumption of wood chips will be approximately 12,000 cubic metres.
Both plants are expected to be the largest of their kind so far, when they are complete.
Canfor Biocrude from Wood Waste New Production Facility
Following Vancouver, BC, Canfor’s announcement in February to create a joint venture with Australia’s Licella for development of a biocrude project, the company this week further revealed plans to install the technology at a new facility in Prince George, BC, where it hopes to produce 400,000 barrels of fuel per year from wood waste at an approximate cost of US$70 million. It will be one of the world’s largest biorefineries, and Licella spent eight years refining and scaling up the technology, having began trials converting sawmill waste in 2013.
The process can convert biomass, including wood residues from Canfor Pulp’s kraft pulping processes, into biocrude oil that is ready to go into existing petrochemical refinery streams to generate renewable fuels.
Co-founded by University of Sydney chemistry professor Dr. Thomas Maschmeyer, Licella developed the unique process in partnership with the University of Sydney. Their Catalytic Hydrothermal Reactor (Cat-HTRTM) technology converts low-cost, non-edible, waste biomass into biocrude oil.
The Canfor-Licella agreement follows a successful pro- gram of preliminary trials conducted on feedstock from Canfor Pulp’s Prince George, British Columbia pulp mill at Licella’s pilot plants located at Somersby, an hour north of Sydney in New South Wales, Australia.
In these trials, wood residue streams from Canfor Pulp’s kraft process were successfully converted into a stable biocrude oil.
Licella Pulp Joint Venture is a strategic relationship between the two companies that will investigate opportunities to integrate Licella’s unique catalytic hydrothermal reactor (Cat-HTR) upgrading platform into Canfor Pulp’s kraft and mechanical pulp mills to economically convert biomass, including wood residues from Canfor Pulp’s kraft pulping processes, into biocrude oil, to produce next generation biofuels and biochemicals.
This additional residue stream refining would allow Can- for Pulp to further optimise their pulp production capacity. Upon successful integration of the Cat-HTR technology, the Licella Pulp Joint Venture would look towards offering this solution to other third party Kraft and mechanical pulp mills.