Day 2 - Tuesday, 26.09.2017
Larissa Becker: Biomass as a renewable energy source - Tuesday, 26.09.2017
The topic for today was “Biomass as a renewable energy source”. First Jana Holm made a presentation about biomass and started her lecture with different definitions of “Biomass” which she founded in the internet. Some of them were good but the others were completely wrong or did not have enough information. However, this was a good example to show that we should consider carefully, especially when we are looking for results at the internet, is this answer right or wrong and why we come to this decision.
Biomass in Finland
Finland has various resources of biomass e.g: forestry, sewage, agricultural and industrial residues. One of the biggest resources is forestry because Finland belongs to the boreal zone and 75 percent of its surface is covered by forest. The growing season is approximately 80 days and there is only a limited number of tree species in Finland. 65 percent of the finish forest consists of Scots pines, 26 percent are Norway spruces and the rest are Silver birches or Downy birches. I really like the downy birches because of its funny name and I have not recognized till today that there are two different sorts of birches. “Ones waste is anothers raw material!” Jana Holm told us how to divide waste in Finland and how companies recycle it and use waste as a raw material. For example there are white and black bags and with the waste of the black bags.
Stormossen, a company in Vaasa, produce biogas and humus.
UPM in Pietarsaari
After a very good lunch a bus picked us up and took us to UPM in Pietarsaari. There we got an introduction in the pulp making process. UPM has three pulp mills in Finland and use all parts of the wood as well as they can, for examples with bark and branches they generate biodiesel and energy. Unfortunately it was not easy for me to understand everything in the presentation about UPM, because there were a lot of information about a process, I have never heard before.
Sarah Neukam: Biomass as a renewable energy source - Tuesday, 26.09.2017
The main topic of the day was the importance and use of wood in Finland. Actually four coniferous species such as Scots pine, Norway spruce, Silver birch and Downy birch are native to Finland. But in fact nearly 75 % of the land area is covered by forests.
Biomass as a renewable energy source – Once waste is another raw material:
Jana Holm gave us an introduction to the topic “Biomass as a renewable energy source”. But what is a source for Biomass? Jana
gave us some hints and definitions of the words “Biomass” and “Renewable energy” from different sources such as Wikipedia or scientific journals. Once again I realized that not all information
that can be found in the Internet are true scientific facts. Often the definitions are incomplete or wrong. It is always useful not only to trust all information in the web, but also to read
acknowledged websites or journals.
At the end we came to the conclusion that Forestry, Sewage, Agricultural, Animal residues, Industrial residues and Municipal solid waste can be a source for Biomass.
After a short coffee break Jana told us about a bio refinery concept she was involved in – especially the fiber sludge. In the laboratory she worked a lot with enzymes and showed us some interesting statistics and results. In this project she could connect Biochemistry and Technique/Processing. I liked that part of her presentation a lot, because we got to know more about her work, her success and also disappointments in laboratory.
Excursion to UPM pulp mill in Pietarsaari:
After launch we visited the UPM pulp mill in Pietarsaari. This facility has an annual capacity of 800,000 tonnes of softwood and hardwood pulp and 200 employees. I have never been to such a pulp mill before, therefore it was a new experience for me. We got to know lots of information and I was really surprised of the big land area that is needed during our “bus drive” on the compound.