VALTHERA is a platform for the recovery of organic waste from natural animal or plant resources (biowaste and by-products) through thermal processes. Its scope of action extends from the recovery of the bioresource to its final use.
This recovery involves obtaining one or more end-products in the form of energy carriers (e.g. syngas, hydrogen, methane). It covers the various stages of shaping and pre-treatment of the bioresource, conversion of the bioresource using controlled thermochemical processes (pyrogasification, catalytic methanation, etc.) and purification of the energy carrier obtained. It has an ICPE (classified installation for environmental protection) authorization to work with waste.
Project examples (past and ongoing)
-
VERITE project
This project, funded by Ademe, the French Environment and Energy Management Agency, was focused on the thermal valorization (gasification and combustion) of farming wastes that to date lacked an established valorization process. Three feedstocks were selected: corn stalks, vine stock and vine shoots. Preconditioning of feedstocks and process conditions were studied to enable the valorizations of distinct types of feedstock.
-
GazeiO2 project
This project, funded by Occitanie region, studies the production of renewable gases (CH4 and H2) by biomass downdraft fixed bed gasification at low and medium scale. Up-to-date gasification technologies developed for the production of renewable gases are suitable at high scale, above 20MW. This scale significantly enlarges the feedstock surface area covered in order to maintain such a production site; collecting distance may be over 100km, leading to increased economic cost and the augmented environmental impact of logistics. In the present project, the existing downdraft gasifier pilot plant has been modified to produce a suitable syngas for renewable gases production.
-
Biosyp project
This project, funded by Ademe, was focused on the production of methane by means of a two-step process: syngas production by gasification and biological methanation of produced syngas. The project focused on the valorization of feedstocks that cannot be valorized via a biological methanation process and on the compatibility among syngas produced by two different gasification processes and biological methanation.