GEA Niro initiative converts CO2 into fuel and animal feed

GEA Niro is leading a new initiative that will, when successful, significantly assist industries with a large CO2 footprint to become more environmental friendly and reduce operational costs spent on governments’ ever increasing lust for the taxation of effluents. The new process converts CO2 into fuel alcohol, proteins for animal feed and fertilizer for agricultural purposes, by feeding the CO2 to algae and transforming the algae to alcohol by fermentation and the residual bio matter to fertiliser. The exhausted yeast cells are then spray dried into protein powder for animal feed.

The principle is simple, however the process implementation is difficult due to the very large installations and large mass flows involved. GEA does, however, have the necessary core competence and correct organisation to handle projects of this magnitude.

CO2 is scrubbed from processes with high CO2 concentrations such as rotary ovens of cement plants. The CO2 is then introduced to basins that contain large volumes of algae which consume the CO2 gas. As algaes are polysaccharides containing fermentable sugars, these are easily converted to alcohol through fermentation. The alcohol can then be recovered for use as fuel, leaving the remaining algae bio mass and yeast cream for drying into useful fertiliser and animal feed respectively.

The process will be ideal for industries with a large carbon dioxide footprint that are interested in savings from CO2 reduction of production processes. These savings can be significant especially as the worldwide tightening of penalties for discharging greenhouse gasses to the environment becomes increasingly severe.

The payback period for such a CO2-transformation installation is, as yet, uncertain. The return on investment is determined largely by the tax rates and other penalties governments impose on CO2 emissions. Robert Djernaes, Food Sales Group Manager of GEA Niro, however, is in no doubt that the cost savings will be significant. “The payback time on a process like this depends largely on how much the plant is paying in emissions taxes and to a lesser extent on the sales price of the produced fertilizer, alcohol and protein for animal feed. Ultimately though, reducing the cost for the plant will reduce the cost for the client and therefore the product’s consumer,” he said.

The process is, as yet, experimental. Currently there are extended tests running in Spain for growing algaes in connection with a cement plant. Preliminary analysis suggests that it is a successful process for reducing CO2 emissions.

GEA Niro is the world leader in spray drying and freeze drying for the food, dairy, chemical and pharmaceutical sectors. Niro is part of the GEA Group.

Steve Jordan - The Words Workshop
26 Swanwick Lane
Milton Keynes
MK10 9LD

Tel: ++44 1908 695500 Fax: ++44 1908 690099
mailto: steve@thewordsworkshop.co.uk
http://www.thewordsworkshop.co.uk

All business enquiries to:

Robert Z Djernæs
Food Sales Group Manager

GEA Process Engineering
GEA Niro
Food & Dairy Division
Office: +45 3954 5638, Mobile: +45 - 2122 2241, Fax: +45 3954 5876
mailto: robert.z.djernaes@geagroup.com
http://www.niro.com

This release was published on openPR.