Costain is working with Dwr Cymru Welsh Water, Wales and West Utilities and food and drink manufacturer Princes Group on a feasibility study to produce hydrogen from biogas from the Cardiff East Waste Water Treatment Works that willfuel boilersto provide heat for fruit juice pasteurisation.
The programme is funded through the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy’s (BEIS)£1 billion Net Zero Innovation Portfolio, which aims to accelerate the commercialisation of innovative clean energy technologies and processes through the 2020s and 2030s.
The H2Juice project has been awarded £372,931 of funding from the BEIS£26 million Industrial Hydrogen Accelerator Programme (Stream 2A), to demonstrate the feasibility of end-to-end industrial fuel switching to hydrogen. The study will take five months with the possibility to awarded further funding in the subsequent Stream 2B, to conduct further engineering and a demonstrator.
The feasibility study will also investigate the ability to utilise different blends of hydrogen with natural gas, enabling the transition to fuel switching and demonstration of system flexibility.
Costain Energy Sector Director, Matt Browell-Hook, said “I’m delighted that our H2Juice project has been selected under the Government’s hydrogen accelerator programme. Costain has been active for a number of years in the development of hydrogen schemes across the UK and this recent award is a great reflection of the hard work our energy teams have been involved in.”
This project builds on a similar study carried out with Welsh Water to evaluate the feasibility of converting waste gases from the sewage treatment process to produce fuel grade hydrogen, which could power local fleet vehicles.
An SIG-backed beverage carton recycling project has won a A$1.74 million grant from the Federal and New South Wales (NSW) Government towards setting up a A$5 million facility that will turn post-consumer beverage cartons and paper cups into high performance building material. The project is funded by the Australian Government’s Recycling Modernisation Fund and the NSW Government’s Waste Less, Recycle More initiative.
The Australian and NSW Governments and the companies behind the project expect the facility will create confidence in a new market for recycled construction materials, similar to roads made from recycled glass, and enable more packaging to become 100 per cent recyclable, in line with Australian national packaging targets.
The project is the first collaboration between SIG and Tetra Pak in Australia under the umbrella of the Global Recycling Alliance for Beverage Cartons and the Environment (GRACE) and is a joint initiative with saveBOARD and its supporters Freightways and Closed Loop.
The Australian Packaging Covenant Organisation (APCO) says this is a fantastic step forward for beverage cartons and for the brands and consumers that use this important type of packaging.
saveBOARD co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Paul Charteris says making high-performance low-carbon building materials using 100 % recycled materials from everyday waste is a game-changer that will transform the construction industry in Australia.
The first Australian saveBOARD plant will reprocess liquid paperboard beverage containers, including both aluminium-lined aseptic packages and non-aluminium-lined containers collected through the container deposit scheme and coffee cups collected through the ‘Simply Cups’ recycling program. It will also source material from document recycling company Shred-X.
Together with supplementary material from industrial processes, these items will be used to manufacture high-performance low-carbon building products to substitute plaster board, particle board, and oriented strand board (OSB) that can be used for interior and exterior applications.
The saveBOARD process uses heat and compression to bond materials, eliminating the need for glues or other chemical additives, to produce a clean product with zero volatile organic compounds (VOCs), suitable for use in homes and commercial buildings.
…and will contribute to protect 17,872 hectares of forest in the Amazon area annually
The Eckes-Granini Group with all its subsidiaries will operate climate neutral throughout Europe as of January 1, 2021. Europe-wide, the Group emitted 43,082 tons of carbon into the atmosphere in 2019 – caused, among other things, by energy and heating, waste processing, employee commuting and business trips. This is the result of a profound analysis of the companies’ carbon footprint in cooperation with ClimatePartner. The solution provider of climate action for companies has been supporting the leading supplier of fruit juices and fruit beverages since this year. With regard to the fight against climate change, the Eckes-Granini Group strives for zero greenhouse gas emissions. In order to get much closer to this overall goal, the Group will offset 43,000 tons carbon emissions of its direct business activities through a carbon offset project conducted by ClimatePartner in Portel, Brazil. Thereby, Eckes-Granini ensures the protection of 17,872 hectares of forest in the Amazon region per year.
Eckes-Granini carbon offset project protects Brazilian primeval forest
Eckes-Granini offsets its emissions by supporting a forest protection project in Portel, in the Brazilian state of Pará. The project protects a total of 151,105 hectares of forest each year. It also provides alternative sources of income and education for the residents of Portel, e.g. through the cultivation of pepper or the training of forest rangers.
Commitment to climate action across Europe
The German subsidiary of Eckes-Granini (hohes C, granini) has already been climate neutral since 2019. This is a great success that was achieved through the implementation of numerous climate protection measures. These include the modernization of facilities, the purchase of green electricity and the reduction of fuel consumption in the logistics fleet. As of January 2021, the entire carbon footprint of all eleven European subsidiaries will be offset.
About ClimatePartner
ClimatePartner is a solution provider of climate action for companies. ClimatePartner combines individual consulting with cloud-based software that is unique on the market. Customers can use it to calculate and reduce carbon emissions and compensate for unavoidable emissions. In this way, products and companies become climate neutral, which is confirmed by the ClimatePartner label. ClimatePartner offers carbon offset projects in different regions and with different technologies and standards. The additional social effects of the projects are particularly important: The 17 goals for sustainable development of the United Nations, the SDGs, are the benchmark here. ClimatePartner was founded in Munich in 2006 and today has more than 100 employees in Munich, Berlin, Essen, Vienna, Zurich and Yerevan and cooperates with more than 2,500 companies in 35 countries.
CARBIOS, an innovative green chemistry company specializing in enzymatic bioprocesses applied to plastic and textile polymers, and TechnipFMC announced the launch of a project for the industrial development of CARBIOS PET enzymatic recycling process. This innovation will allow to produce virgin PET from plastic waste. This contract covers assistance to CARBIOS for the scale up of its process to ensure industrial competitiveness.
CARBIOS’ proprietary innovation provides an industrial solution to fulfill sustainable development requirements of PET production processes. The global market of PET records a 4 % to 5 %[1] annual growth and represents a world production of 64 million tons each year[2] (eq. $70 billion), split between one third of plastics and two thirds of fibers. In 10 years’ time, the annual production of this market is expected to reach 100 million tons (eq. $110 billion).
This process has been developed for the recycling of PET plastics, namely bottles, films and packaging. It enables to overcome constraints and limits of current recycling processes by the treatment of all kind of plastics containing PET (transparent, coloured, opaque and complex), and by the recovery of high-performance virgin PET directly from plastic waste. For the first time, a biological process paves the way to infinite recycling of PET following circular economy principles.
CARBIOS and TechnipFMC, world-leading Company in the fields of energy, chemistry and bio-sourced industries, signed this contract to transpose CARBIOS’ process from the laboratory to the pilot scale. This assistance will further aim at supporting the development of the project and define the bases of the industrial process. Through this contract, CARBIOS will benefit from TechnipFMC industrial know-how in bioprocess engineering and from the expertise of its German affiliate Technip Zimmer, in PET polymerization technologies.
Alain François, General Manager of TechnipFMC Operating Center in Lyon, notably in charge of the projects for chemical and bio-sourced industries, commented: “We are delighted to work with CARBIOS on this enzymatic recycling process that represents a true revolution in the world of PET. We have gained a solid experience in process engineering and we are very enthusiastic at the idea to assist CARBIOS in shaping the industrialization of this innovation. It’s a premiere in the world of green chemistry to which we can bring our expertise and know-how in the fields of process industrialization, engineering and project management.”
[1] Source: Smithers Pira in 2014, Icis in 2009 and Pira International in 2012
[2] Source: SRI Consulting in 2010, ICIS in 2009, Samsung in 2010, Tecnon in 2013 and IHS in 2014
