LIFE + Environment Policy and Governance Climate Change

Layman’s Report

LIFE11 ENV/LU/0854

Factory of the Future VOCs EMISSIONS

Demonstration of the production of wood panels with near-zero environmental footprint

Project co-financed by the European Union (Total budget: € 7.947.433; EU contribution: € 3.035.090)

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1. SUMMARY

Factory of the Future project, co-financed by the European Union (LIFE11 ENV/LU/0854),

has been successfully implemented by Kronospan Luxembourg S.A. during its 53 months’

period (June 2012 – October 2016). This was enabled also by the fruitful collaboration with

the partner LIST (Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology). The aim was to

demonstrate the viability of “the eco-design of a factory”: innovating the production

methodology to reach a low environmental footprint wood panel production which is also

economically sustainable.

During the project were combined the already installed cutting edge installations with new

equipment, such as a wood-dust generator and condensing and rain capturing units, and,

few months after the end of the project, with a wood-energy Combined Heat and Power

(CHP), by far the largest in capacity of its kind in Luxembourg. The operation parameters

were optimised in order to work synergistically and largely rely on renewable resources, such

as recovered water and wood by-products, while the production volume and quality was

maintained or increased during the project. The project contribute to the awareness of the

solution in using a CHP to serve the drying processes of a wood-panel factory, while using

the by-products for renewable energy production, by the same CHP, and can be regarded as

an example in increasing the degree of on-site use of local energy sources and a leap

forward in increasing the circularity of the production.

Project actions constitute advancement towards circularity in the wood-panels industry. I.e.:

• the wood by-products of the plant are used directly on-site by a CHP to create energy (heat and electricity) of renewable origin;

• 3/4 or more of the green energy produced by the CHP is used directly on-site;

• the vapours in waste-heat are condensed and the obtained water is re-circulated on-site in the fabrication of MDF and in the treatment of overall emissions;

• also the heat present in exhausted gas of the OSB dryer and the Press-Boiler is largely recovered and used on-site in the pre-drying phase of the OSBs.

After the end of the project,

the installation of the CHP

plant was incomplete and

consequently the project

reached partially its very

ambitious objectives.

In the last year of the

project, compared to the

reference year 2010, the

factory recorded: -59% on

the natural gas

consumption, -58% on the

CO2 eq. emissions of fossil

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origin and -37% on the town water consumption. The initial objectives were: -90% on natural

gas consumption, -80% on CO2 eq. emissions and -75% on town water consumption.

The CHP entered in test phase 4 months after the end of the project and will be fully

operational after another 3 months of tests. It is expected that in the first year of CHP

functioning at full capacity the first 2 objectives will be reached or surpassed and the third

objective will be reached, or in the range to be reached.

Based on the results obtained during the project, a possible future development of the plant

of Kronospan Luxembourg is to expand the OSB production by installing in particular a new

production line more energy efficient, coupled with a second wood-energy CHP. This will

expand the environmental benefits and the degree of circularity of the production.

2. PROJECT BACKGROUND

The wood panel industry is generally very environment oriented, as protecting natural

resources goes hand in hand with ensuring future availability of wood and thus business

continuation. However, not all facilities use the same input wood type and have the same

availability of wood by-products. Therefore efforts are very much dependent on the situation

of the particular production.

In the case of the Kronospan’s production site in Sanem, several projects, dedicated to the

improvement of the products and production process, from an environmental and technical

point of view, were successfully implemented. This project wanted to make another huge

leap forward, while previous improvement has always targeted specific parts of the

production line, within this project the aim was to achieve a full-scale demonstration of a the

concept of “eco-design of a factory”.

The factory in Sanem produces several hundred versions of two types of wood panel boards

used in the building sector, furniture and packaging: oriented strand boards (OSBs) and

medium density fibreboards (MDFs). OSB is a wood panel built up in three layers of strands

(wood flakes) bonded in with a resin in different orientations i.e. the outer layers strands are

arranged at right angles to those in the middle layer. MDF is a composite panel product,

primarily of cellulosic fine fibres bonded and cured under heat and pressure.

The OSB production in Sanem is made in several steps: “logging”(reception and storage of

wood logs); “flaking” (debarking and stranding of logs flaking); “drying”(drying of wood

strands from 50 to 150% of moisture content to 5%); “screening”(screening of dry strands to

separate the finest); “blending and forming” (blending of strands with adhesives mixture, wax

and hardener and forming in order to obtain a mat), and “pressing”(strong pressure is applied

to the mat to get the OSB). An additional final step of sanding and finishing could be required

for some OSB products according to their use.

The production process of MDF can be summarized into the following main steps: “logging”

(similar to the logging for OSB panels); “refining” (debarking of logs, mechanical reduction in

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small chips, then the chips are screened and the result mixed with fines from OSB screening,

filtered, washed, softened thermally and mechanically transformed into fibres); “blending”

(mixed with a synthetic resin as adhesive); “drying”, and “pressing” (pasted fibres are

assembled and compressed in a hot press at the desired thickness). Sanding is compulsory

for all MDFs. For the MDFs used for flooring, a lamination phase is added to the process.

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3. DESCRIPTION OF THE TECHNIQUE/METHODOLOGY IMPLEMENTED AND THE RESULTS ACHIEVED

The improvements of already present equipment were estimated thorough a close monitoring

and analysis of the energy and water use of production lines, determining the exact state of

consumption with respect to the objectives. For instance, wood production requires thermal

energy (heat) for the drying process, and electricity for other equipment (e.g. conveyor belts,

presses, etc.). Maximum energy efficiency and minimum fossil energy use was ensured

through continuous enhancements during the project: e.g. pre-drying of the wet wood flakes

using excess heat from the process; increase of the steam generator efficiency;

reinforcement or replacement of the insulation of the boiler and dryer chambers, acquisition

of a supplementary wood-dust generator to crush wood by-products to feed the dryer, etc.

Important quantities of drinking water were used in the past for exhausted air cleaning and

steam generation. In order to lower the consumption, the water efficiency of the steam

generator was increased. After the installation of the water recycling units circuit (i.e. water

from condensation and rainwater capturing), almost 40% of the initial town water

consumption is assured by internally recycled water.

With the CHP fully functional the energy required for the production of OSB and MDF panels

will be powered mostly by biomass while excess green electricity is provided to the national

power grid. Due to the synergy with OSB-MDF production, the total potential of energy

recovery from the the CHP burning the by-products is expected to approach 96%.

One year after the end of the project the installation of a new surface/rainwater treatment

facility with a storing capacity of 15 500 m3 will help to extend the third objective by adding

supplementary storing capacity, facing centennial rains. The construction is currently in

waiting for the neighbouring on-going landfill, on which filled site will be built, to be closed.

4. ENVIRONMENTAL BENEFITS OF THE PROJECT

The wood-energy consumption is covered for the largest part by on-site sources; however is

expected that at full CHP functioning, about 40% (preferably by-products) will be purchased

from external sources. Consequently, special attention was given to the management of the

supply chain, from a lifecycle perspective, in order to increase the availability of the raw

material without pressuring on forests and minimizing the transport distances. To this aim,

the use of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) as environmental evaluation method was

instrumental to avoid moving pollution from one category of impact to another as well as to

monitor and prove the progress in reducing the environmental footprint. LCA allowed the

downscaling of the environmental improvements reached at the site level using a cradle-to-

gate perspective, also allowing the breakdown on types of products.

The Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) methodology employed was IMPACT 2002+ which

proposes a combined damage-oriented approach. The environmental performance is

expressed as single score.

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The single score environmental impact, cradle-to-gate, of a generic cubic meter of OSB

product is reduced in 2016 by more than 11% compared to the reference year of the project,

2010. For a generic cubic meter of MDF the reduction in 2016 is of more than 7%.

For both categories of products the reduction is mainly due to the reduction of natural gas

use which led to significantly less impact on “Climate change” and “Resources”. If we look

into details we can see that using more wood increases slightly (2-3% of total) the

“Ecosystems quality” impact, mainly due to the raise in terrestrial ecotoxicity and land

occupation. Though the transfer of impact from one category to another theoretically exists, it

is not considered statistically significant.

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5. VISIBILITY OF THE PROJECT

Dissemination activities and their focus on the significant environmental benefits of the project allow visibility of the project. A wide spectrum of stakeholders (including Kronospan group itself) was covered, ranging from the general public and end-users to important actors from the wood-panel industry, the wood waste suppliers or local and national authorities, i.e.:

• dissemination inside the Kronospan Group: through internal meetings with representatives of other Kronospan factories from different countries;

• dissemination in the wood-panels industry, at European level: among suppliers of equipment from different European countries, commercial partners and clients (through international fairs and exhibitions);

• dissemination towards public authorities and policy makers, NGOs of experts or end-users: through visits and presentations at local, regional and national level;

• dissemination in the research and development community: through presentations in Life Cycle Management and Assessment conferences, specialised press, international workshops, networking with other projects;

• dissemination towards the general public and end-users: through the project website, partners’ websites, fairs and exhibitions in several European countries.

Print screen of the LIFE Factory of the Future website (www.factory-of-the-future.eu).

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Life Cycle Management (LCM) Conference, will take place in Luxembourg, 3-6 September 2017. LCM is the main, biennial, world event of the Life Cycle Assessment community. At the latest edition of LCM, almost 700 participants from all continents were recorded, this attendance being equally divided between the industry, the consulting and the academia. Kronospan is a platinum sponsor of LCM 2017 and from this position will inform this audience, initially targeted, of the methods implemented and the results obtained during the project and after its termination, in the frame of the LIFE+ programme. After the end of the project the dissemination activity will continue. E.g.:

• Meetings with clients on the site of Sanem and at different locations throughout Europe (mainly at the users’ premises, in France, Germany, and in different countries in Eastern Europe etc.),

• Continue the programme of visit of the new facilities for the stakeholders, and possibly for the LCM participants,

• Description of the project actions and installed equipment in specialised press, e.g. BIOénergie International (March 2017),

• Participation to different fairs and exhibitions and fairs in 2017, e.g.: GEDIMAT, BIGMAT, D-fibois, Salon tout faire, Carrefour du bois, etc.

6. TRANSFERABILITY OF THE PROJECT

It has been determined that the solution implemented during the project is sustainable and replicable. Also this solution can be improved in the future on other sites with better development conditions. The functionality of the ensemble shows to the actors in wood-panels industry that a higher on-site circularity is possible and highly beneficial: environmentally, economically and socially.

Other paths for increasing the circularity of the industry are potentially available, especially regarding the use of recycled materials instead of raw material (e.g. develop fabrication solutions to reuse wood-panels or include recycled wood in their products).

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For more information

Kronospan Luxembourg - S.A., B. P. 109

L - 4902 Sanem, Luxembourg Tel. (+352) 59 03 11 – 1 | Fax (+352) 59 03 11 - 8213

Contact person: Mr. Marko Becker E-mail: info@kronospan.lu

Project website: www.factory-of-the-future.eu

LIFE+ Project Webpage: http://ec.europa.eu/environment/life/funding/lifeplus.htm