Phoenix BioPower

Phoenix BioPower  was a Swedish company that developed technology to help solve the climate crisis by facilitating the transition to more renewable and fossil-free energy production. In particular, the company worked on ways to use biomass residues to replace a large part of the fossil-fuel-derived energy used today. As biomass is mainly made up of carbon and hydrogen, “green” biomass hydrocarbons can replace fossil fuels for both energy production and industrial needs. Globally there are thousands of TWh of biomass residues available that could be used for energy every year; just in the EU, there are over 5 000 TWh! Much of this biomass is not used today or is used in very inefficient processes. By replacing fossil energy with efficiently produced biomass-derived energy, not only can carbon emissions be reduced but atmospheric levels of CO₂ can also be reduced through Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS) plants for carbon-negative power production.

Phoenix BioPower was developing an advanced technology platform that would be the basis of a Biomass-Fired Top Cycle (BTC) power plant. The basis of the BTC plant integrates pressurised gasification with gas turbine combustion and massive steam injection. This enables the BTC plant to perform at radically higher efficiency levels compared to traditional technologies like the steam cycle. The basic configuration of the BTC plant can produce heat and power at the same time and is also very well suited for carbon-negative power generation.

As this plant was based on a new thermodynamic cycle, new technology needed to be developed. To this end, Phoenix BioPower was collaborating with PDC application experts to run computational fluid dynamics simulations on the Dardel system that aided in designing and developing tools and methods suitable for the BTC plant.

For questions about this or other PDC business partnerships, please contact business-unit@pdc.kth.se .