Watch five-minute broadcast from Danish television.
CEO Ove Munch, Frichs Pyrolysis and Professor Jørgen E. Olesen from the University of Aarhus, explains the climate potential of biochar, on DR1 "Our Weather", november 2020.
The innovation
We have developed a method and a reactor for pyrolysis treatment of virtually all hydrocarbon-containing material - including sewage sludge, synthetic materials, animal and vegetable biomass.
It is a new designed pyrolysis reactor.
A pyrolysis gas system has been developed which, via flash pyrolysis and with a newly developed reactor design, extractes a clean gas without tar and with a calorific value of 18-21, which therefore works perfectly in a CHP plant and a biochar with almost no PAH.
One must imagine the gas generator used on cars during World War II in a larger and newly developed design - but the basic principle is the same. The challenge during the war was, and has been ever since, that the calorific value has been at 3-5 , and that tar fragments in the gas have caused engines to quickly to work bad because of soot - alternatively that the plants and processes developed have been unprofitable.
It is now resolved.
Value-adding benefits
The plant has at least 4 immediate value-adding benefits for potential customers - but overall, community benefits:
1. Pyrolysis gas for energy – electricity and/or heat - with a high calorific value (18-21). To compare, this method produce approx. 50% more gas than a conventional biogas plant.
2. Waste management / disposal of residual products from production - handles virtually all hydrocarbon-containing material.
The residual product is a useful coal product - biochar with at least two value creators:
3. The process is CO2 negative, as the carbon content of the biochar contains more than 20% of the CO2 that otherwise would be released e.g. by incineration or digestion. Used as fertilizer, the CO2 will be bound for more than 2,000 years.
4. The biochar contains most of the biomass's original fertilizers that are fully absorbable to plants - mainly the phosphorus. Phosphorus is already on the global agenda as a future shortcoming. E.g. by burning, almost all the phosphorus content is lost in relation to plant uptake.
The rawmaterials – biomasses
Different raw materials as well as final use of the gas give different compositions of the sub-elements that form part of a total solution.
However, the pyrolysis gas reactor which gasifies the raw materials, is part of all of them.
Raw material test – biochar
Different raw materials contain different amounts of energy - when the energy / gas is generated, the residual amount of biochar is different depending on the raw material.
Below the table lists a number of raw materials tested, dried to approx. 10% water.
It shows that e.g. 1 tonne of pig manure yields 300 kg of biochar
Frichs Pyrolysis ApS
Sverigesvej 14
DK 8700 Horsens
CVR: 40922865
Phone +45 40367165
omu@frichs.com