Novozymes to supply enzymes to St1 Biofuels in Finland

Novozymes has announced a deal to supply enzyme technology to a new biorefinery that will be built by St1 Biofuels in Kajaani, Finland.

The facility will be co-located at a sawmill site, and will be the first facility in the world to use sawdust from softwood as feedstock to produce cellulosic ethanol at commercial scale.

The process uses steam-explosion to open up the cellulosic structures of sawdust, followed by enzymatic hydrolysis to extract the sugars for ethanol fermentation.

The plant will initially produce 10 million litres (2.7 million gallons) of cellulosic ethanol per year, but can be scaled up to annual output of between 50 and 100 million litres a year.

Total investment is expected to be €40 million, of which an investment grant will cover 30%.

Construction is scheduled to begin in the second half of 2015, with production expected to start in 2016.

'Northern Europe has a large industrial sector based on forestry, and this opens up many possibilities,' says Sebastian Søderberg, VP of biomass conversion at Novozymes. 'The biomass and specialist knowledge is available here, and the long-term political framework is in place in Finland, which all works together to enable the commercial production of cellulosic ethanol based on softwood.'

Mika Aho, MD at St1 Biofuels, adds: 'The collaboration is key in optimising our production costs that is one of the key elements in commercial cellulosic ethanol production.'

The construction of the biorefinery supports Finland's climate and energy strategy. The country has implemented a mandate to increase the share of renewable energy in transport up to 20% by 2020.

The plant will be built and operated by St1 Biofuels using its proprietary pre-treatment and process technologies called Cellunolix. It is owned by North European Bio Tech Oy (NEB), and the production capacity of the plant will be leased to North European Oil Trade Oy (NEOT). The Finnish investor, NEB, is an associated company of SOK Corporation and energy company St1 whose purpose is to invest in biofuel production units.

 

SOURCE: Novozymes