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Factory of the Future

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

Project co-financed by the European Commission and in partnership with the Centre de Recherche Public Henri Tudor.

On June 2012 Kronospan Luxembourg launched the activities linked to the project “Factory of the Future: Demonstration of the production of wood panels with near-zero environmental footprint”, developed in the frame of the EU Life+ programme.

Project objectives

This project aims at demonstrating that the environmental footprint of the firm can be strongly reduced, while the production volume and quality is maintained, and that such a production plant is economically viable.

This goal can be achieved by:

Cutting the current use of fossil fuels for the generation of thermal energy;
Reducing the consumption of town water;
Producing electricity through cogeneration of combined heat and power from biomass;

Concretely, the aim is to:

Cut the current use of fossil fuels for thermal energy by 90%;
Cut over 80% of the current CO2 emissions from fossil fuels;
Cut 70-75% of the currently consumed town water.

Kronospan is working together with the project partner CRP Henri Tudor, who provides support in the analysis and tests of the plant performance. At CRP Henri Tudor, the project is carried out by the Resource Centre for Environmental Technologies (CRTE), which is one of the Centre’s departments. The FoF goals and methodology are in line with CRTE’s overall approach of an optimized management of substance and energy flows.

To achieve the highly ambitious goals set by this project, the partners intend to reach a synergy through the combination of innovative technologies and best practices. These best practices consist of:

On-site generation of thermal energy and electricity
The replacement of a large part of town water by harvested rainwater
Recovery of output heat from the steam of the production process

The installation and construction of the CHP unit will not be part of the project, but the integration and the parameterization will be covered.

Timeline

The Factory of the Future will be realised in 3 phases:

Preparatory actions
Implementation actions
Monitoring of the impact of the project actions

During the first phase Kronospan and CRP Henri Tudor will study the current production in order to determine the exact state of the production lines with respect to the objectives. The analysis will focus on the thermal energy consumption, the electrical energy consumption and the town water consumption. The objective is to assess how much the energy efficiency can be improved and how much resources can be produced and recovered directly on the site. This phase was finalised in June 2013.

The implementation actions will consist in applying the measures needed in order to reduce the water footprint and the carbon footprint of the facility. These will include:

Increase of the efficiency of the water distribution system;
Water recovery and recycling from the production process;
Collection and storage of rainwater for valorisation in the production where lower water quality is required;
Increase of the amount of biomass for combustion;
Increase of the total energy efficiency.

The monitoring of the impact of the project actions will be fully implemented between July 2013 and October 2015.

The project will finish on October 31st 2015.

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: M. Marko Becker
E-mail: m.becker@kronospan.lu