Overview
The global CO2 emissions have been in steady increase for more than 50 years inducing global warming. The CO2 emissions mainly derive from the use of fossil fuels, i.e. oil, natural gas and coal. Today, more than 80% of total primary energy is produced globally by fossil fuels. In order to cut down CO2 emissions, the fossil resources have to be at least partially replaced by renewable alternatives.
The renewable resources are diverse and often subject to seasonal and local availability changes. Therefore, a wide range of flexible technologies are needed for the renewable energy production. The major bottleneck in many of the available technologies is the investment and production cost. The COMSYN project combines latest technological innovations for a feasible biofuel production concept.
The aim of the project is to develop a new biomass-to-liquid (BTL) production concept that will reduce biofuel production cost up to 35% compared to alternative routes. This means < 0,80 €/l production cost for diesel.
The production concept is based on distributed primary conversion of various kinds of biomass residues to intermediate liquid products with small-to-medium scale (10-50 kt/a FT products) units located close to biomass resources. The primary conversion will be integrated to local heat and power production resulting in 80% energy efficiency in biomass utilisation.
The FT products will be refined to high quality drop-in liquid transport fuels at existing oil refineries. The novel gasification technology will enable the use of wider feedstock basis than the current gasification processes. In addition to woody residues, the process is able to use straw and other agricultural residues, and various waste-derived materials. The produced FT-wax will be transported to existing large scale oil refinery, which will be gradually converted into biofuel refinery as the number of primary conversion plants increases.