With a Swedish partner, the company is looking to build a black liquor gasification plant in Michigan
January 2008
By Felicia Willis, Associate Editor and Nils Lindstrand, Freelance Reporter
According to the US Department of Energy, the pulp and paper industry is among the nation's most energy intensive manufacturing industries. However, between 1972 and 1994, it dramatically increased its energy self-sufficiency from 36% to 57%, largely by making better use of black liquor. Conventional technology burns the black liquor in boilers in order to recover the pulping chemicals. Gasification of the black liquor, however, could substantially improve the efficiency of the process.
Signed, sealed, soon to be delivered
To that end, a seemingly unlikely duo has united in a major attempt to utilize the benefits of biofuels. US producer NewPage and Swedish engineering company Chemrec have recently signed an agreement with the purpose of pursuing the prospect of developing a black liquor gasification plant (BLG). This plant, which will be housed at the NewPage pulp and paper mill in Escanaba, MI, is intended by parties on both sides to be up and running by 2010.
“The State of Michigan, through its Economic Development Corporation (MEDC) learned of Chemrec’s technology as it explored a relationship between the state and Sweden,” explains Kelvin Smyth, government and community manager of NewPage. In the chain of events following NewPage’s interest, “Chemrec identified the NewPage facility and the MEDC approached NewPage. NewPage executives then traveled to Sweden to observe the technology, and hammered out an agreement,” Smyth says.
This unprecedented agreement took place in Stockholm, Sweden, where Swedish deputy Prime Minister Maud Olofsson, Michigan Governor Jennifer M. Granholm and US Ambassador to Sweden Michael Wood all participated.
“This partnership between Chemrec and NewPage is a great opportunity for us as we work to make Michigan the North American hub for alternative energy production,” Governor Granholm commented. “With its potential for biomass-based fuel production, this plant in Escanaba could put Michigan at the forefront of renewable next-generation fuels, helping to end our dependence on foreign oil while bringing jobs and investments to the community.”
Collaborating is undoubtedly a huge undertaking for both NewPage and Chemrec. “Pulp and paper has not recently been the most profitable business,” said NewPage CEO Mark A. Suwyn. “When the BLG plant is in place, we can increase our production of paper, and at the same time get a new income from production of biofuel. We are taking the step from being a pulp mill to become a biorefinery.”
The proposed plant will employ Chemrec's BLG technology, which converts waste from the pulping process into synthesis gas. The synthesis gas can be used to generate power and electricity, or processed into a variety of biofuels such as dimethyl ether (DME) and methanol (MeOH), or alternatively Fischer-Tropsch diesel (FTD), synthetic natural gas (SNG) or hydrogen (H). According to officials at Chemrec, the phenominal potential of this particular type of fuel production process and the available feedstock is large. For Sweden alone, it could replace approximately 30-40 % of that country's consumption of fuel.
“Chemrec has a pilot plant in Sweden,” Smyth explains, “our project, if constructed, would scale that process up about 25 times. If successful, it would provide economic opportunities for kraft pulp mills across the country and around the world.” This demonstration plant has been up and running for two years in in Piteå, north of Sweden, in cooperation with Chemrec and board producer Smurfit Kappa.
Additionally, the renewable fuels, produced in large-scale plants, would have prices comparable to fossil petrol and diesel. Analyses show that the BLG production process is among the most energy efficient production routes to renewable fuels, and consequently results in high CO2 reduction levels. For the Escanaba mill it is estimated that the process could yield up to 13 million gallons of liquid biofuel per year from the black liquor waste stream. The plant would be closely integrated with the paper mill to optimize energy efficiency and enhance the pulp production capacity of the mill. Chemrec's gasification plants can be fully integrated in existing pulp mill processes.
While this is considered to be an industrial project, it is also part of a wider cooperation in alternative energy development between the US, the state of Michigan and Sweden. Michigan and Sweden both have economies where forest industry and car production play vital roles. Decision makers in Michigan are said to have the ambition to be the hub for development of alternative energy in the US, and Michael Wood, a Michigan native, has made cooperation in alternative energy technologies his personal pet project during his tenure as ambassador to Sweden.
“BLG addresses two of the major parts of the climate/energy issue, energy for vehicles and for electric power generation. This makes the project in Escanaba very interesting,” ambassador Wood noted. Olofsson, who is also Swedish minister of enterprise, was positive about the BLG project being launched. “To save the climate, we need real industrial projects,” Olofsson said. “I want action, and I am very happy to see this project launched. Sweden has high quality research in forest industry and alternative energy, and the US has a generally high level in R&D, and money to carry through large projects. We have a lot to gain from working together in this.”
High hopes for the future
NewPage has extremely high hopes for the agreement. “We are in what we are calling a pre-feasibility phase, which we expect to be complete by mid-January. Either side can walk away at that point, or at the end of the feasibility stage, which will be complete by the end of the third quarter of 2008. At that point, if all lights were green we would go to our board of directors to fund a commercialization project,” Smyth comments. “We would expect to produce a liquid fuel or syngas that was commercially viable and economically feasible.”
NewPage is headquartered in Dayton, OH, and is mainly a producer of coated papers. With 4,300 employees, the company operates four integrated pulp and paper manufacturing mills located in Escanaba, MI; Luke, MD; Rumford, ME; and Wickliffe, KY. These mills have a combined annual capacity of approximately 2.2 million tons of coated paper. It recently purchased the North American assets of Stora Enso. Six of those mills are in Wisconsin, one is in Duluth, Minnesota and the eighth is in Port Hawkesbury, Nova Scotia, Canada.
Chemrec is a Swedish company headquartered in central Stockholm with an engineering office in Karlstad and a development plant - now mechanically completed in Piteå, all in Sweden. In addition Chemrec has a point of contact in Charlotte, and New Bern, NC.
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