One of the world’s most energy-efficient plants for the production of bioethanol is currently being started up in Norrköping, Sweden. The Multipressure system from Vogelbusch GmbH in Austria plays a key part in cutting process energy consumption. With a weekly output of more than 3 million litres of bioethanol, the plant is the biggest in northern Europe, bringing Sweden one step closer to the independence of fossil fuels.

The biggest bioethanol plant in northern Europe is currently being started up close to Norrköping in Sweden. Running at maximum capacity, it will be able to produce almost half a million litres of bioethanol a day from grain. The plant operator – Swedish company Lantmännen Agroetanol – deliberately opted for grain when planning the bioethanol plant. Dr. Torsten Schulze from Vogelbusch GmbH, responsible for process engineering and monitoring the start-up of distillation and dehydration at the plant, explains: „Anyone who is serious about reducing CO2 emissions opts for bioethanol production from sugar or starch- based raw materials such as grain, because there are currently no industrial-scale processes for producing bioethanol using other alternative raw materials. In fact, even if the production of bioethanol from other raw materials is upscaled in the future, this process will still be more energy-intensive than production from sugar or starch-based raw materials. That is why Agroetanol chose this type of system and opted for a process design that delivers optimum energy efficiency in areas with high energy consumption – namely distillation and dehydration – which is where the Multipressure system from Vogelbusch comes in.“

Full steam ahead!

The Multipressure system achieves its exceptional energy efficiency by recycling the steam used in the distillation process. This benefit is generated by the finely-balanced use of several distillation columns with different steam pressures, which combine to bring about a significant reduction in steam consumption. The system uses over 50% less steam than conventional technologies, thus generating equivalent savings in the energy required to produce it. In the Vogelbusch Multipressure system, the plant’s ground-breaking energy-

saving properties are boosted further still by the optimum thermal integration of the distillation and dehydration processes.

More than efficiency

It is more than just the high energy efficiency of this type of plant that Dr. Schulze values: „In a recent study, the German Institute for Energy and Environmental Research (IFEU) demonstrated very clearly that, when land utilization effects are factored into the equation, the greenhouse gas balance of systems using sugar or starch-based raw materials is better than those using other raw materials. This is because these systems are the only ones to produce animal feed as a by-product. As a side effect, large areas of land can be used to grow food for human consumption instead of being allocated to the production of animal feed. In other words, grain is used very efficiently in the production of bioethanol – the high- energy components are used to produce bioethanol, while the residual nutritious parts are used to manufacture animal feed, thus replacing other types of land-intensive production. The study shows that producing bioethanol from grain cuts greenhouse gas emissions by up to four times more than previously thought.“

The sustainability of bioethanol production at the plant near Norrköping is higher still because a biomass power station nearby supplies the energy required for the process. Thanks to this combination of state-of-the-art technology for distillation and dehydration and the biogenic process energy, the bioethanol plant is ideally equipped to meet the sustainability criteria of the EU.

About Vogelbusch GmbH (as at December 2008):
VOGELBUSCH GmbH plans and implements production facilities for biotechnology processes worldwide. Customers include starch and sugar processing companies („white biotechnology“) and the biopharmaceutical industry („red biotechnology“). The company is based in Vienna (Austria), was founded in 1921 and is privately owned. VOGELBUSCH employs a total workforce of 125 and has subsidiaries in Katy, Texas (U.S.) and Hong Kong (China).

Contact for Vogelbusch GmbH: Katharina Harlander Blechturmgasse 11
1050 Vienna

T +43 / 1 / 54661 – 210 E hak@vogelbusch.com

Vienna, 9th December 2008

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