Kalundborg Symbiosis |
- when business and the environment walk hand-in-hand
Kalundborg Symbiosis is a networking cooperation project involving a number of industries, waste-handling companies and Kalundborg Municipal Distribution in which the parties utilise each other’s residual or by-products commercially. In that way, production can be increased without enhancing the consumption of water, energy or other resources correspondingly – thereby maintaining production costs while benefitting the environment at the same time.
The PartiesKalundborg Symbiosis originally consisted of the following eight members but is now being extended to newcomers on the industrial arena:
The energy cooperation10 % of Denmark’s overall electricity/power consumption is produced in Kalundborg. The outcome is an annual CO2 emission of approximately 4.3 million tonnes – half of which stems from surplus heat in production. In the industrial symbiosis, Statoil Refinery, Novo Nordisk and Novozymes purchase a part of this surplus heat as process steam to run part of their production. This exchange provides for an annual CO2 reduction of approximately 240,000 tonnes of CO2.
The water cooperationThe overall water consumption of the industries within Kalundborg Symbiosis is approximately 10 million m3 per year for their production. Almost one third – 3 million m3 – is recycled and re-used in the symbiosis – a fact that means fewer expenses for the industries – and a substantially smaller pressure on the water supply systems.
By-product cooperationThe smoke originating from the production at Asnæs Power Station is de-sulphured before being let into the environment. The desulphurisation process is conducted using lime and recycled water – and this process creates a residual product - namely industrial gypsum. This gypsum – approximately 100,000 tonnes on a yearly basis – is used by Gyproc to produce plasterboards for the construction industry. In the same way, the yeast – a residual product from Novo Nordisk’s production of insulin – is used as feed for approximately 800,000 pigs every year. Slurry, stemming from the municipal water treatment plants in Kalundborg, is exploited by RGS 90 as a nutrition agent in its soil cleaning processes. Finally, Novo Nordisk and Novozymes are producing an annual 150,000 tonnes of the fertilising product, NovoGro, from their water treatment.
The futureA new symbiosis partner is Inbicon’s bioethanol plant in Kalundborg, which takes in surplus heat from Asnæs Power Station so that the overall CO2 emissions are reduced by an extra 25,000 tonnes on a yearly basis. In the symbiosis partnership, efforts are being made to optimise the recycling of water so that up to 200,000 m3 of clean water - delivered as process steam - can be returned to Asnæs Power Station instead of being let into the sewers. Finally, the partners in Kalundborg Symbiosis are examining the potential for using alternative energy sources in production whereas new partnerships have been established around the extraction of biogas from wastewater |
