Sunshine Kaidi (Finland) New Energy Co. Oy (Kaidi Finland) is an

energy company The energy industry is the totality of all of the industries involved in the production and sale of energy, including fuel extraction, manufacturing, refining and distribution. Modern society consumes large amounts of fuel, and the energy ind ...

that plans to build a biofuel refinery in Kemi,

Finland Finland ( fi, Suomi ; sv, Finland ), officially the Republic of Finland (; ), is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It shares land borders with Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of B ...

. It is a subsidiary of the Chinese energy company Sunshine Kaidi New Energy Group. The refinery would use

second generation biofuel Second-generation biofuels, also known as advanced biofuels, are fuels that can be manufactured from various types of non-food biomass. Biomass in this context means plant materials and animal waste used especially as a source of fuel. First-gene ...

technology. Its investment value is around one billion

euro The euro ( symbol: €; code: EUR) is the official currency of 19 out of the member states of the European Union (EU). This group of states is known as the eurozone or, officially, the euro area, and includes about 340 million citizens . ...

Kemi biofuel refinery

The biofuel refinery in Kemi would generate approximately 200,000 metric tons of biofuel, of which 75% would be

biodiesel Biodiesel is a form of diesel fuel derived from plants or animals and consisting of long-chain fatty acid esters. It is typically made by chemically reacting lipids such as animal fat ( tallow), soybean oil, or some other vegetable oil ...

and 25% biofuel. The feedstock used in the refinery would be mainly

energy wood Wood fuel (or fuelwood) is a fuel such as firewood, charcoal, chips, sheets, pellets, and sawdust. The particular form used depends upon factors such as source, quantity, quality and application. In many areas, wood is the most easily availabl ...

along with crop residues and surplus materials from the

forest industry The wood industry or timber industry (sometimes lumber industry -- when referring mainly to sawed boards) is the industry concerned with forestry, logging, timber trade, and the production of primary forest products and wood products (e.g. furn ...

. The refinery’s yearly demand for wood would be 2 million cubic tons of energy wood. There is a total of 120,000 hectares of

forest A forest is an area of land dominated by trees. Hundreds of definitions of forest are used throughout the world, incorporating factors such as tree density, tree height, land use, legal standing, and ecological function. The United Nations' ...

in need of first felling within a 200

kilometer The kilometre ( SI symbol: km; or ), spelt kilometer in American English, is a unit of length in the International System of Units (SI), equal to one thousand metres (kilo- being the SI prefix for ). It is now the measurement unit used for ex ...

range of Kemi. An amount of 20 million cubic meters of energy wood can be harvested from it yearly. Currently, approximately 6 million cubic meters of wood is left over in the woods every year. Kaidi Finland has reported that it may also procure energy wood from Sweden. The effect the refinery would have on employment in Kemi is notable. The building process would bring 4,000 person-years’ worth of

labor Labour or labor may refer to: * Childbirth, the delivery of a baby * Labour (human activity), or work ** Manual labour, physical work ** Wage labour, a socioeconomic relationship between a worker and an employer ** Organized labour and the la ...

to the area. When the refinery is completed, it would employ 150 persons full-time while bringing hundreds of jobs to local subcontractors and energy wood providers. The domestic content of the project is estimated to be around 50 percent. Kaidi will make the final decision regarding the investment during 2016.

Technology

The planned refinery in Ajos, Kemi would use second generation biofuel technology, such as

plasma gasification Plasma gasification is an extreme thermal process using plasma which converts organic matter into a syngas (synthesis gas) which is primarily made up of hydrogen and carbon monoxide. A plasma torch powered by an electric arc is used to ionize ...

, syngas cleanup and the Fischer-Tropsch process. Plasma gasification involves heating the processed

material Material is a substance or mixture of substances that constitutes an object. Materials can be pure or impure, living or non-living matter. Materials can be classified on the basis of their physical and chemical properties, or on their geolo ...

to a notably higher

temperature Temperature is a physical quantity that expresses quantitatively the perceptions of hotness and coldness. Temperature is measurement, measured with a thermometer. Thermometers are calibrated in various Conversion of units of temperature, temp ...

than in other gasification methods, making it more suitable for the processing of demanding materials, such as wood. The process increases the efficiency of the feedstock. The Fischer-Tropsch process is a

catalytic Catalysis () is the process of increasing the rate of a chemical reaction by adding a substance known as a catalyst (). Catalysts are not consumed in the reaction and remain unchanged after it. If the reaction is rapid and the catalyst recyc ...

chemical reaction A chemical reaction is a process that leads to the IUPAC nomenclature for organic transformations, chemical transformation of one set of chemical substances to another. Classically, chemical reactions encompass changes that only involve the pos ...

, where

carbon monoxide Carbon monoxide (chemical formula CO) is a colorless, poisonous, odorless, tasteless, flammable gas that is slightly less dense than air. Carbon monoxide consists of one carbon atom and one oxygen atom connected by a triple bond. It is the simple ...

and

hydrogen Hydrogen is the chemical element with the symbol H and atomic number 1. Hydrogen is the lightest element. At standard conditions hydrogen is a gas of diatomic molecules having the formula . It is colorless, odorless, tasteless, non-toxic ...

are transformed into

liquid hydrocarbon In organic chemistry, a hydrocarbon is an organic compound consisting entirely of hydrogen and carbon. Hydrocarbons are examples of group 14 hydrides. Hydrocarbons are generally colourless and Hydrophobe, hydrophobic, and their odors are usuall ...

s. The catalysts are

iron Iron () is a chemical element with Symbol (chemistry), symbol Fe (from la, Wikt:ferrum, ferrum) and atomic number 26. It is a metal that belongs to the first transition series and group 8 element, group 8 of the periodic table. It is, Abundanc ...

and

cobalt Cobalt is a chemical element with the symbol Co and atomic number 27. As with nickel, cobalt is found in the Earth's crust only in a chemically combined form, save for small deposits found in alloys of natural meteoric iron. The free element, p ...

based and speed up the chemical reaction in certain temperatures. The primary function of the process is to produce a synthetic oil replacement to be used as a synthetic lubricant or fuel. The process was invented by Franz Fischer and Hans Tropsch in the 1920s as a way of producing liquid fuel. Second generation biofuels refer to fuels that use

municipal solid waste Municipal solid waste (MSW), commonly known as trash or garbage in the United States and rubbish in Britain, is a waste type consisting of everyday items that are discarded by the public. "Garbage" can also refer specifically to food waste ...

and materials high in

lignocellulose Lignocellulose refers to plant dry matter (biomass), so called lignocellulosic biomass. It is the most abundantly available raw material on the Earth for the production of biofuels. It is composed of two kinds of carbohydrate polymers, cellulose a ...

content in their production.

Project

Kaidi first began planning the biofuel refinery in 2014 after the previous project by Vapo and

Metsä Group Metsä Group (previously Metsäliitto Group) is a Finnish forest industry group present in about 30 countries. Metsä Group's core businesses are tissue and cooking papers (Metsä Tissue), board (Metsä Board), pulp (Metsä Fibre), wood products ...

was discontinued. Vapo and Metsä Group had planned to build a similar refinery in Ajos. This means that the city of Kemi is already well prepared for the planned refinery and has advanced the required permit applications. In 2016, Kaidi Finland planned to finalize the permit applications along with the

design A design is a plan or specification for the construction of an object or system or for the implementation of an activity or process or the result of that plan or specification in the form of a prototype, product, or process. The verb ''to design' ...

and modeling of the refinery. The building project would start in 2017 and the refinery would begin producing biofuel for commercial markets in 2019. In Oct 2016, Kaidi Finland signed a contract with the city of Kemi to acquire a 32 hectare land area for the planned biofuel refinery. The project was put on hold until EU Renewable Energy Directive is implemented in Finnish law, which may happen 2020 or later. As of March 2022, Kaidi Finland still planned to build a biofuel refinery, however the project was still pending.

References

External links

*{{Official website, http://www.kaidi.fi/ Oil companies of Finland Biodiesel producers Renewable energy in Finland

Kemi biofuel refinery

Technology

Project

See also

References

External links