Equipement de gazéification pour plateforme innovante dédiée aux énergies nouvelles

The goal of the GENEPI project is to develop an intermediate scale R&D equipment, open to the scientific and industrial communities, which enables to solve national and international issues on second generation biofuels production through the Biomass-to-Liquid (BtL) process value chain. It aims to become a reference open-access technology platform in Europe. It associates an entrained-flow reactor (EFR) facility, designed to work at elevated pressure and temperature with a feedstock pre-treatment unit based on torrefaction and grinding.

The originality of this project relies on several points. First, the pilot scale of the EFR facility offers the possibility to fill in the gap between the existing lab facilities and demonstration projects in Europe and therefore to make the required R&D efforts on a unit which is both flexible and representative of industrial plants. Secondly, the development of a pre-treatment unit enables the production of finely ground torrefied biomass under controlled conditions and at a significant scale. Such an open-access unit does not exist in Europe. Moreover, the GENEPI facility is also the first one that couples the two main steps of the BtL process: torrefaction and gasification.

The organization of the project is based on three main partners (CEA, ARMINES, CIRAD) that gather their skills to develop an experimental tool, not only limited to their own use, but open to collaboration with French and European R&D actors as well.

The project officially started on 15/09/2012 (TO), and the agreement N°ANR-11-EQPX-0019 was signed on 15/01/2013. The first phase of investment and construction, from T0 to 30/09/2015, is now ended and all the equipment are operational. The second phase of the project which is the operational phase started in October 2013 before the official start-up (14/03/2014) allowing tests for industrial contracts.

The inauguration of the platform took place on September 8th, 2016.