Applying expertise for new processes

Kirsti Kärkkäinen and Fran Weaver look at Finnish research funds that are promoting innovative ways to mitigate climate change

Finland’s ClimBus Programme - business opportunities in mitigating climate change - focuses on clean energy production and fuels, energy efficiency technologies, new types of business services, and technologies for reducing emissions of other greenhouse gases than carbon dioxide. “We see the urgent need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions around the world as an opportunity to promote environmental technologies and other favourable innovations,” says Teija Lahti-Nuuttila, Energy and Environment Director of Tekes, Finland’s main public financing and expert organisation for research and technological development.

Tekes provides extensive funding for innovative and risk-intensive R&D projects in industry, universities and research institutes. Tekes works through technology programmes like ClimBus to channel financing, promote networking and provide expert services in specific areas chosen for their importance to business and society. Finnish energy and environmental technology programmes received €82m of funding from Tekes in 2006 – approximately 17 percent of Tekes’s total funding. The ClimBus Programme encompasses many diverse projects related to Finland’s special strengths in the energy field.  

Wood energy expertise
“Finland has high-levels of know-how in many key areas when it comes to mitigating climate change, such as bio energy,” says Ms Lahti-Nuuttila. “Especially in the field of wood energy we are a major technology provider as well as a technology user. Almost a quarter of the energy used in Finland comes from renewable sources, and much of this is wood energy in various forms.”  

“To further increase our use of bio energy, we will need to exploit many new technologies. Finland is the world leader in technologies used in harvesting wood for energy use. Three-quarters of all the forestry machines used around the world are made in Finland. Fitted with special felling heads or other equipment, these same machines can also be used to harvest energy wood. Mechanisation is vital for fuel wood harvesting to be economically viable,” explains Lahti-Nuuttila.

Many regions around the world are today looking to reduce their net greenhouse gas emissions and improve energy self-sufficiency by increasing their use of biofuels. But the future availability of suitable fuel must be ensured before competitive bio energy schemes can be set up. Finnish researchers are working in various countries to build up vital information on local potential for exploiting wood energy.

According to Antti Asikainen, Professor of Forest Technology at The Finnish Forest Research Institute (Metla), such research primarily aims to study the applicability and competitiveness of Finnish technologies for the procurement and utilization of forest biomass for energy in new market areas: “The idea is to give both customers and technology suppliers the reliable research results they need on how these technologies will perform in new environments.”

Burning issues
Other include assessments of the feasibility of firing heating plants with wood chips made from locally available logging residues, sawdust and bark from mills, or harvested timber not used by other local industries. Energy wood is often combusted together with fossil fuels or recovered combustible materials. Existing boilers can be modified to enable them to use a variety of fuels, reducing risks related to fuel prices and availability.

“Through the ClimBus Programme we’re funding a lot of related research – for instance into the composition and corrosive effects of flue gases and ashes generated when biofuels combusted,” adds Lahti-Nuuttila. “The aim is to find proper super heater materials and to optimise the use of additives, and also develop new tools for controlling combustion according to the composition of fuels. This is a very challenging research field, but there is plenty of expertise in Finland, for instance at Åbo Akademi University.”

Climate investments
“Improving energy efficiency is another important way to cut emissions. Technologies that lead directly to energy savings play a major role, but there is also increasing demand for services that can help energy producers and users to shape energy consumption patterns favourably,” says Ms Lahti-Nuuttila. New economic instruments related to European and global efforts to combat climate change, such as the EU emissions trading scheme, are of vital importance to many companies.

“One of our customers has developed a special model to predict the future prices of EU allowances. The model is based on forecast levels of supply and demand, as well as information on sector- and country-specific marginal emission abatement costs. The complexities of emissions trading have particularly created whole new business niches for new companies to exploit,” explains Ms Lahti-Nuuttila.

Promoting energy efficiency
Meanwhile at the electricity supply end, new remote metering technologies now allow Finnish electricity distributors to monitor clients’ hourly consumption rates through signals collected automatically by special software through GSM networks or power lines. Finnish companies have developed a wide range of metering equipment, software and services for electricity providers, linking new information and communications technologies to sophisticated automatic electricity meters.

By encouraging consumers not to use electricity during periods of peak demand, electricity companies can manage energy loads to reduce the need to run more expensive and more polluting electricity generating capacity. Many household heating systems are already set to use low-tariff off-peak electricity.

Better information can also help small-scale power producers running distributed energy networks to decide when to contribute energy into grids, or purchase power externally. Real-time monitoring also helps energy users to understand how their actions affect their overall energy consumption.

High-speed technologies
Half of the electricity used around the world today drives motors of various kinds. Huge quantities of energy could be saved by making large motor drives run more efficiently. Experts from the Lappeenranta University of Technology are designing innovative energy-efficient high-power electrical motor drives and generators for large-scale industrial applications.   

The motor drives under development in Lappeenranta rotate at speeds as high as 12,000 revs per minute, and use more than three megawatts of power. The high-speed motor drives are much more efficient than conventional drives, leading to energy savings of up to 30 percent. There are many potential uses for the new industrial motor designs, especially in pumps, compressors and fans.

“The new motor designs are based on solid rotors made of a single piece of steel,” explains Professor Juha Pyrhönen of Lappeenranta’s Electrical Engineering Department. “Most conventional rotors have several hundred interconnected parts, and it’s almost impossible to make them rigid enough to run at the kinds of high speeds that can greatly boost energy-efficiency levels.”

According to Juha Pyrhönen there is plenty of international interest in the new motor designs: “It helps that Lappeenranta has built up a reputation over the latest twenty years as a major research centre for solid-rotor induction motor technologies. More than 20 researchers from different special fields are involved in this project. Advanced development work requires many different kinds of know-how and close collaboration.”

Pyrhönen feels that the new high-speed high-power motor technologies are ready to break through onto major markets once enough competition develops to interest major industrial clients. “New high-speed technologies can especially prove to be unbeatable in difficult areas for standard technologies, and the need to save energy to help mitigate climate change is also an important factor.” Pyrhönen adds.

A key future challenge
“One of the greatest challenges for the future concerns the need to produce liquid biofuels for motor vehicles cost-effectively and sustainably in environmental terms,” says Lahti-Nuuttila. The Finnish energy company Neste has been developing biodiesel fuels for many years, and the company’s first large-scale production plant is soon due to start up in Porvoo.

Life cycle analyses have been conducted in Finland on the raw materials that can be used in ethanol-based biofuels. One focus has been on the potential for using woodchips to make liquid biofuels. A pilot production plant will soon be up and running at Stora Enso’s pulp mill in Varkaus.

“This field is so important that this spring at Tekes we’ve launched an extensive new technology programme to build up know-how on the refining of biomass, and apply this expertise to create new processes, products and services,” says Ms Lahti-Nuuttila. The new programme, BioRefine – new biomass products, will run until 2012, with a total budget of €137m.