Project description
Paving the way for biomass to green transport
The transport sector is responsible for more than a quarter of Europe’s greenhouse gas emissions and is the main cause of air pollution in cities. Biomass can contribute to the decarbonisation of the transportation sector. Absorbing CO2 as it grows, biomass is a type of renewable resource that can be converted into biofuels for transportation. However, due to high process complexity and costs, less than 0.1 % of biomass is used to produce biodiesel. In this context, the EU-funded CONVERGE project will validate an innovative value chain for the production of green biodiesel. CONVERGE will unlock the adoption of waste and secondary biomass as a resource for producing green methanol for biodiesel production.
Objective
The CONVERGE project will validate an innovative value chain for the production of green biodiesel. The innovative configuration will reduce the total number of unit operations needed to achieve the conversion of secondary biomass and waste streams into green biodiesel, while simultaneously producing additional intermediate green refinery products. The CONVERGE project will demonstrate 5 unit operations in 3 grouped processing steps (pre-processing, valorization & enhanced methanol), taking these new combinations from the discovery stage (TRL3) to development stage (TRL5). The combination of these technologies will increase the biodiesel production from secondary biomass by 12% together with biodiesel production will be reduced by up to 2100 M€ across Europe. In this project, risks are mitigated from the very start; each unit can be implemented as a stand-alone function within a modified state-of-the-art technology chain and thus provide immediate performance and energy efficiency improvements. Moreover, the units when used together have synergies that allow even more efficiency gains. The new units to be taken from discovery to development are: CCT: Catalytic cracking of tars from a gasifier to below green C8, integrated with BITS: Recovery of refinery products including aromatics for green C6-C8 fraction (BTX). Then, SER: Sorption-Enhanced Reforming is adopted for H2 and CO2 separation, integrated with EHC: Highly efficient electrochemical compression of green H2 with by-product fuel EMM: Enhanced Methanol Membrane synthesis to ensure green biodiesel production. The technology will be validated for more than 2000 cumulated hours. The CONVERGE consortium covers the whole value chain from secondary biomass supply to biodiesel production, demonstrating the new unit operations on site within an ambitious 50 months period.
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Funding Scheme
RIA - Research and Innovation actionCoordinator
20133 Milano
Italy