Sunshine Kaidi (Finland) New Energy Co. Oy (Kaidi Finland) is an energy company that plans to build a

biofuel Biofuel is a fuel that is produced over a short time span from Biomass (energy), biomass, rather than by the very slow natural processes involved in the formation of fossil fuels such as oil. Biofuel can be produced from plants or from agricu ...

refinery in

Kemi Kemi (; ; ; ) is a cities of Finland, town and municipalities of Finland, municipality of Finland. It is located approximately from the city of Tornio and the Finland–Sweden border, Swedish border. The distance to Oulu is to the south and t ...

Finland Finland, officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It borders Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of Bothnia to the west and the Gulf of Finland to the south, ...

. It is a subsidiary of the Chinese energy company Sunshine Kaidi New Energy Group. The refinery would use second generation biofuel technology. Its investment value is around one billion

euro The euro (currency symbol, symbol: euro sign, €; ISO 4217, currency code: EUR) is the official currency of 20 of the Member state of the European Union, member states of the European Union. This group of states is officially known as the ...

Kemi biofuel refinery

The biofuel refinery in Kemi would generate approximately 200,000

metric tons The tonne ( or ; symbol: t) is a unit of mass equal to 1,000 kilograms. It is a non-SI unit accepted for use with SI. It is also referred to as a metric ton in the United States to distinguish it from the non-metric units of the sh ...

of biofuel, of which 75% would be

biodiesel Biodiesel is a renewable biofuel, a form of diesel fuel, derived from biological sources like vegetable oils, animal fats, or recycled greases, and consisting of long-chain fatty acid esters. It is typically made from fats. The roots of bi ...

and 25%

. The

feedstock A raw material, also known as a feedstock, unprocessed material, or primary commodity, is a basic material that is used to produce goods, finished goods, energy, or intermediate materials/Intermediate goods that are feedstock for future finishe ...

used in the refinery would be mainly energy wood along with crop residues and surplus materials from the

forest industry The wood industry or timber industry (sometimes lumber industry – when referring mainly to sawed boards) is the industry concerned with forestry, logging, timber trade, and the production of primary forest products and wood products (e.g. fu ...

. The refinery’s yearly demand for wood would be 2 million cubic tons of energy wood. There is a total of 120,000 hectares of

forest A forest is an ecosystem characterized by a dense ecological community, community of trees. Hundreds of definitions of forest are used throughout the world, incorporating factors such as tree density, tree height, land use, legal standing, ...

in need of first felling within a 200

kilometer The kilometre ( SI symbol: km; or ), spelt kilometer in American and Philippine English, is a unit of length in the International System of Units (SI), equal to one thousand metres (kilo- being the SI prefix for ). It is the preferred mea ...

range of Kemi. An amount of 20 million cubic meters of energy wood can be harvested from it yearly. Currently, approximately 6 million cubic meters of wood is left over in the woods every year. Kaidi Finland has reported that it may also procure energy wood from

Sweden Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country located on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. It borders Norway to the west and north, and Finland to the east. At , Sweden is the largest Nordic count ...

. The effect the refinery would have on employment in Kemi is notable. The building process would bring 4,000 person-years’ worth of

labor Labour or labor may refer to: * Childbirth, the delivery of a baby * Labour (human activity), or work ** Manual labour, physical work ** Wage labour, a socioeconomic relationship between a worker and an employer ** Organized labour and the labour ...

to the area. When the refinery is completed, it would employ 150 persons full-time while bringing hundreds of jobs to local subcontractors and energy wood providers. The domestic content of the project is estimated to be around 50 percent. Kaidi will make the final decision regarding the investment during 2016.

Technology

The planned refinery in Ajos, Kemi would use second generation biofuel technology, such as plasma gasification,

syngas Syngas, or synthesis gas, is a mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide in various ratios. The gas often contains some carbon dioxide and methane. It is principally used for producing ammonia or methanol. Syngas is combustible and can be used as ...

cleanup and the Fischer-Tropsch process. Plasma gasification involves heating the processed

material A material is a matter, substance or mixture of substances that constitutes an Physical object, object. Materials can be pure or impure, living or non-living matter. Materials can be classified on the basis of their physical property, physical ...

to a notably higher

temperature Temperature is a physical quantity that quantitatively expresses the attribute of hotness or coldness. Temperature is measurement, measured with a thermometer. It reflects the average kinetic energy of the vibrating and colliding atoms making ...

than in other gasification methods, making it more suitable for the processing of demanding materials, such as wood. The process increases the efficiency of the feedstock. The Fischer-Tropsch process is a

catalytic Catalysis () is the increase in reaction rate, rate of a chemical reaction due to an added substance known as a catalyst (). Catalysts are not consumed by the reaction and remain unchanged after it. If the reaction is rapid and the catalyst ...

chemical reaction A chemical reaction is a process that leads to the chemistry, chemical transformation of one set of chemical substances to another. When chemical reactions occur, the atoms are rearranged and the reaction is accompanied by an Gibbs free energy, ...

, where

carbon monoxide Carbon monoxide (chemical formula CO) is a poisonous, flammable gas that is colorless, odorless, tasteless, and slightly less dense than air. Carbon monoxide consists of one carbon atom and one oxygen atom connected by a triple bond. It is the si ...

and

hydrogen Hydrogen is a chemical element; it has chemical symbol, symbol H and atomic number 1. It is the lightest and abundance of the chemical elements, most abundant chemical element in the universe, constituting about 75% of all baryon, normal matter ...

are transformed into liquid hydrocarbons. The catalysts are

iron Iron is a chemical element; it has symbol Fe () and atomic number 26. It is a metal that belongs to the first transition series and group 8 of the periodic table. It is, by mass, the most common element on Earth, forming much of Earth's o ...

and

cobalt Cobalt is a chemical element; it has Symbol (chemistry), symbol Co and atomic number 27. As with nickel, cobalt is found in the Earth's crust only in a chemically combined form, save for small deposits found in alloys of natural meteoric iron. ...

based and speed up the chemical reaction in certain temperatures. The primary function of the process is to produce a

synthetic oil Synthetic oil is a lubricant consisting of chemical compounds that are artificially modified or synthesised. Synthetic oil is used as a substitute for petroleum-refined oils when operating in extreme temperature, in metal stamping to provide en ...

replacement to be used as a synthetic

lubricant A lubricant (sometimes shortened to lube) is a substance that helps to reduce friction between surfaces in mutual contact, which ultimately reduces the heat generated when the surfaces move. It may also have the function of transmitting forces, ...

fuel A fuel is any material that can be made to react with other substances so that it releases energy as thermal energy or to be used for work (physics), work. The concept was originally applied solely to those materials capable of releasing chem ...

. The process was invented by Franz Fischer and Hans Tropsch in the 1920s as a way of producing liquid fuel. Second generation biofuels refer to fuels that use

municipal solid waste Municipal solid waste (MSW), commonly known as trash or garbage in the American English, United States and rubbish in British English, Britain, is a List of waste types, waste type consisting of everyday items that are discarded by the public. ...

and materials high in

lignocellulose Lignocellulose refers to plant dry matter (biomass), so called lignocellulosic biomass. It is the most abundantly available raw material on the Earth for the production of Biofuel, biofuels. It is composed of two kinds of carbohydrate polymers, c ...

content in their production.

Project

Kaidi first began planning the biofuel refinery in 2014 after the previous project by Vapo and Metsä Group was discontinued. Vapo and Metsä Group had planned to build a similar refinery in Ajos. This means that the city of Kemi is already well prepared for the planned refinery and has advanced the required permit applications. In 2016, Kaidi Finland planned to finalize the permit applications along with the

design A design is the concept or proposal for an object, process, or system. The word ''design'' refers to something that is or has been intentionally created by a thinking agent, and is sometimes used to refer to the inherent nature of something ...

and modeling of the refinery. The building project would start in 2017 and the refinery would begin producing biofuel for commercial markets in 2019. In Oct 2016, Kaidi Finland signed a contract with the city of Kemi to acquire a 32 hectare land area for the planned biofuel refinery. The project was put on hold until EU Renewable Energy Directive is implemented in Finnish law, which may happen 2020 or later. As of March 2022, Kaidi Finland still planned to build a biofuel refinery, however the project was still pending. In November 2024, the European demo-plant database demoplants21 updates the Kemi biorefinery’s status to “''cancelled''”; projected start-up (originally 2019) is removed.

References

External links

*{{Official website, http://www.kaidi.fi/ Oil companies of Finland Biodiesel producers Renewable energy in Finland

Kemi biofuel refinery

Technology

Project

See also

References

External links