‘WORLD FIRST’ WASTE BASED BIOFUEL PLANT INTEGRATED INTO OIL REFINERY IN SWEDEN

Renewable bioethanol firm, St1 Biofuels, a subsidiary of the Finnish energy company St1 Oy is to deliver an Etanolix® plant that will produce waste based bioethanol to North European Oil Trade (NEOT) in Gothenburg, Sweden.

According to St1, the Etanolix plant will produce ethanol for transport fuel, using feedstocks such as biowaste and process residue from local bakeries and bread from shops that is past its sell-by date.

The plant, which is currently under construction at the refinery in Gothenburg, is expected to have an annual production capacity of 5 million litres of bioethanol.

St1 added that the refinery will operate the Etanolix plant, which will be fully integrated into the refinery functions and logistics. The production will start up in early 2015.

Etanolix process

The Etanolix process has been developed as part of a EU funded LIFE+ Project and produces ethanol from biowastes. The steps in the figure above can be described as follows:

Raw-material from the food industry is collected and transported to the refinery

The ethanol plant produces both an 85% ethanol and a by-product called stillage. The stillage can be used as animal feed or the production of biogas

The 85% ethanol is then dehydrated to approximately 100% ethanol

After a quality check the ethanol product is pumped to the refinery storage tanks and then blended to finished product according to specification

Delivery of the gasoline from the refinery to terminals and retail sites.

World first

This project is claimed to be the first in which an ethanol production plant is being built and integrated at an existing oil refinery to produce waste and residue based ethanol on a sustainable basis.

Thanks to its feedstocks and production technology, St1 said that the ethanol produced at the Etanolix plant will be almost carbon-neutral.

“Our Etanolix concept – producing waste- and residue-based ethanol – is now a finished export product. Building a plant in Gothenburg is a significant launch on the international market for us,” commented Patrick Pitkänen, head of business development and sales at St1 Biofuels.

This is the first biofuel production plant owned by NEOT, which is an oil and biofuel wholesale trading company.