Page 110 - Biorefinery 2030 Future Prospects for the Bioeconomy (2015)

78 3 Industrial Symbiosis at the Bazancourt-Pomacle Biorefinery

CRISTAL UNION Betheniville sugar factory because of local administrative
boundaries. This waste is controlled and monitored by the ARD Environment
department.
The spraying technique used by the CRISTAL UNION cooperative is
recognised as exemplary by the European Union. Spraying denotes supplying
agricultural land with water and minerals; in this case, the minerals result from
the processes used on the production site. Three of the different minerals necessary
for plants to develop well are particularly essential: nitrogen, phosphorus and
potassium. Through its water management practices, CRISTAL UNION has
woven close links with the farmers who benefit from its spraying services. Thus,
the sugar factory has encouraged other firms on the site to use potash (a source of
potassium) rather than soda ash to regulate pH. Spraying thus contributes essential
minerals to the crops that are beneficial to their development. This new practice
enables farmers to reduce their chemical inputs and the biorefinery to optimise its
water flow management.

2.4 Possible Improvements to the System

The biorefinery’s stakeholders continually look for possible optimisations, in an
attempt to improve the “biorefinery system,” and thus the system is constantly
changing. Although improvements are still possible, the work undertaken over
many years has brought the site almost to an optimal situation in terms of
energy use.
One of the recent initiatives taken by CRISTANOL was to construct a biomass-
fuelled boiler as part of an initial plan that in the long term could be made up of two
boilers. An estimation of the financial value of the project has been made using
mostly data from the public domain and various hypotheses. This estimation is
summarised in the box below.

Box 3.1 Economic and Environmental Impact of the Installation of Two Biomass
Boilers on the CRISTANOL Site
CRISTANOL, which is a leading European bioethanol producer, and a
subsidiary of CRISTAL UNION (55 %) and BLETANOL (45 %), is
committed to the development of the biomass sector in France. CRISTANOL
did not have its own boiler, and its premises were totally supplied with steam
by the boiler of the neighbouring CRISTAL UNION sugar plant, which
operates using natural gas, via a pipeline more than one kilometre long.
CRISTANOL consequently decided to set up a steam production unit fuelled

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