Joint forces within biomass based fuels
Fortum, UPM and Valmet have joined forces to develop a new technology to produce advanced high value lignocellulosic fuels, such as transportation fuels or higher value bio liquids.
The five-year project is called LignoCat, Lignocellulosic fuels by catalytic pyrolysis.
The project is a natural continuation of the consortium's earlier bio-oil project together with the VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, commercialising integrated pyrolysis technology for production of sustainable bio-oil for replacement of heating oil in industrial use.
In this project, the consortium aims higher and the target is to develop novel integrated technology to produce high value biofuels to replace fossil transportation fuels, and thereby create new business for the consortium companies.
UPM's knowledge of biofuels plays a key role in the project;
"Our aim is to become a significant advanced biofuel producer. In accordance with our strategy, we will start production in Lappeenranta with crude tall oil residue as a raw material, and simultaneously we are looking for ways of producing biofuels out of solid wood biomass."
"Catalytic pyrolysis is one of the promising options we are looking into", says Petri Kukkonen, Vice President, UPM Biofuels.