Neste Oil and Stora Enso have inaugurated a cutting-edge demonstration plant for biomass to liquids (BtL) production utilising forestry residues.

The facility at Stora Enso’s Varkaus Mill includes a 12 MW gasifier and will be used to develop technologies and engineering solutions for a commercial-scale plant. The units at the facility will cover all stages of the process, including biomass drying, gasification, gas cleaning, and testing of the Fischer-Tropsch catalysts needed.

“Being able to use a wide range of raw materials is very important in producing renewable fuels,” according to Matti Lievonen, Neste Oil’s President & CEO, speaking at the inauguration.

“The volumes of fuels we use in Europe are very large … and this means that if we want to replace a significant proportion of current fuels with renewable ones, we will need all the raw material options we can develop – from harvesting waste through vegetable oil and animal fat to algae and other materials. There is plenty of room for all of these and more.”

Biomass-based renewable fuels represent a significant future business opportunity for Stora Enso, according to the company’s CEO, Jouko Karvinen.

“This will require further development work and competitive forest industry mills to host the future commercial units.”

For more on the project, see our article. For more on Neste Oil and Stora Enso, surf over to www.nesteoil.com or www.storaenso.com.

Neste Oil and Stora Enso are working together to develop a new generation of biofuel production technology using wood-based biomass, such as branches, stumps, bark, sawdust, and cutter waste. A demonstration plant was officially commissioned at Varkaus in Central Finland in June. Photo courtesy of Stora Enso.

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