French company turns up the heat - biomass torrefaction technology
Thermya, a French engineering company leader in biomass energy recovery, announces today the release of its TORSPYD technological process for the torrefaction of non-food biomass.
Thermya, a French engineering company leader in biomass energy recovery, announces today the release of its TORSPYD technological process for the torrefaction of non-food biomass. TORSPYD, which was designed by Thermya, is the most advanced and developed torrefaction technology currently available. It indeed is to date the only industrially proven process in Europe enabling the torrefaction of any type of agricultural and forestry non-food biomass, on a continuous way.TORSPYD technology innovative process is based on the “solid organics distillation principle”. This patented technology, designed and developed by Thermya, enables to fully dehydrate and then depolymerize the biomass in order to produce an absolutely hydrophobic and homogeneous solid fuel; it is characterized by the highest energy yields performance of all technologies known to date.Torrefaction by TORSPYD allows to convert all kinds of biomass into BioCoal. This BioCoal, which contains less than 1% moisture, retains 95% of the initial biomass energy and more than 90% of its initial dry mass. The BioCoal’s net calorific value is around 20500 kJ/kg; far greater than the one of non-torrefied biomass. BioCoal can be mixed to fossil coal and co-fired in thermal power stations without any modification of the facilities.
Co-firing BioCoal, as a substitute for coal, eliminates mix-rate limitations, reduces CO2, SO4 and NOx emissions. On top of that, thanks to lower NOx emissions, co-firing BioCoal allows to achieve equivalent energy efficiency with reduced fuel consumption.
As a result of its hydrophobic properties BioCoal cannot incur any biological degradations and can therefore be stored and shipped safely without any risk linked to climate conditions. The TORSPYD torrefaction column is energy self-sufficient: the re-injection of 4% of the BioCoal production into the torrefaction system allows to complement the process’s operational energy requirements.
“Today, Thermya is the only company in Europe to offer an industrially proven, fully operational biomass torrefaction continuous process,” explains Jean-Sebastian Hery,
Technical Vice-President and co-founder of Thermya. Thermya signed a first license agreement in 2009 with the Spanish company IDEMA, Group Lantec. Through this agreement IDEMA will build torrefaction units based on the TORSPYD process.
“In summary, main benefits of our TORSPYD technology are unrivalled performance levels and extremely low operating costs. TORSPYD is the relevant response to the environmental and economical issues electricity producers, operating coal-fired power stations, are currently facing.
It also opens up opportunities for manufacturers of classical wood pellets or forest operators, whose production could gain considerable value from torrefaction. Classical pellets are indeed commonly produced from sawdust or from coproducts of the primary wood processing industry, whereas our technology is designed to produce premium quality biomass fuel (totally dry and hydrophobic) directly from forestry residues - hardly used at present. Besides all that, producing premium quality pellets from torrefied wood is less energy-consuming than producing classical wood pellets,”
comments Hervé Chauvin, Managing Director and co-founder of Thermya.
Thermya will attend the Globe 2010 exhibition in Vancouver (24-26th March 2010) to introduce its technology and initiate commercial and industrial long-term partnerships in the North-American marketplace.
About Thermya:
Thermya is a French engineering company founded in 2002, which specializes in the design of technological solutions to convert non food biomass into carbon or energy. Thermya has developed a unique and innovative proprietary torrefaction technology called TORSPYD®, that allows the concentration of almost all the energy contained in any ligno-cellulosic material. Thermya is also involved in the recycling of wood waste and organic solids. The company is headquartered in Villenave d’Ornon, close to Bordeaux, and has a staff of 15 people including five engineers and four scientists. For additional information please visit:
www.thermya.com
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