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In years gone by, Danish farmers used to burn off the straw left in their fields after harvesting the crops, as there was so little demand for it. How times change. Today straw is a highly valuable biomass resource that is used in Danish power stations to produce heat and electricity, and it can also be used to produce 2nd generation bioethanol for mixing with petrol. The technology for the latter has now been fully developed by DONG Energy subsidiary Inbicon at its demonstration plant on Funen with DKK 54.2 million in support funding from the Energy Technology Demonstration and Development Programme, and is ready for commercialisation, reports the Danish Energy Authority in a news release. Energy company Statoil expects to be able to supply its first customers with a bioethanol blend before the end of this year. Blending bioethanol with petrol can reduce CO2 emissions by 85%; it has been calculated that if 10% of the petrol Denmark consumes were replaced with 2nd generation bioethanol, CO2 emissions would be reduced by 600,000 tons, corresponding to 1% of Denmark's total CO2 emissions.
In addition to 2nd generation bioethanol, Inbicon's straw-based production process produces other high value products, in the form of molasses for animal feed and biomass briquettes for power stations. The latter in fact makes the Inbicon process self-sufficient in energy terms, since the briquettes are sent to nearby Asnæs power station to be used as fuel, whereafter Asnæs supplies surplus steam back to Inbicon for use in its straw digestion process.
Source: Denmark.dk
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