Trust the Swedish to be brilliantly innovative, but this time the new achievement is a joint effort by Sweden and Finland. In a nutshell, a Finnish based high tech company has developed and implemented a new recycling technology which uses waste materials from bakeries and turns them into biofuel, every bit as good as any other fossil fuel. At the moment, the technology is adapted and used by a Swedish Gothenburg based oil refinery. The method produces five million litres of highly advanced bioethanol. The amounts of biofuel produced in this way are due to power local public transport at first, and then later on perhaps their use will be widened.
The new production was developed as part of an EU initiative aiming to produce large quantities of bioethanol from just as much waste material. Here is how the actual process works:
- Raw waste material from the food industry is collected through specialised rubbish removals and then transported and deposited at the refinery.
- The production methods used at the Gothenburg refinery actually generated two substances – en eighty five percent purity ethanol, and a by-product known as stillage, the stillage can either be used to produce biogas or in the production of animal feed.
- Next step is to purify the ethanol to a hundred percent grade, this is done using a process called dehydration;
- Once dehydration is completed, and the ethanol is at nearly hundred percent purity, it is pumped into the refinery’s storage tanks from where it is mixed with other fuels according to specific requirements;
- After a final quality check, the fuel is transported from the refinery to redirection terminals and retail sites;
Currently, the administration and use of the Gothenburg refinery’s production is shared by a number of companies for different purposes. The EU is actually investing more resources into production of such fuels, this along with similar projects receive direct funding by European Commission and other regulative bodies. The Finnish company which developed and implemented the new technology has established itself as one of the most innovative and effective such organisations in Europe. Use of waste for generation and purification of biofuel is nothing new, for instance China Steel Company has been investing substantial amounts in such refinement technologies. Many other key industrial players across the world have done the same. What makes the Gothenburg bioethanol scheme even more unique and innovative is the fact that for the first time ever, an independent or separate production and purification system is attached effectively to an existing, conventional fuel refinement technology.
The fuel produced using this method has another upside – it is almost carbon neutral, making it even less harmful to the environment. If the production rate is maintained at this level in the months to follow, it is expected for the bioethanol to become a valuable export commodity. This is the first self-sustainable project initiated and administered by the Gothenburg based, joint venture oil refinement company North European Oil Trade (NEOT), and so far results have been more than promising.
