Watch our company videoBlackwood announces the successful production start of NTBC commercial black pellet plant in Thailand
Blackwood announces the production of Super Black™ pellets for metallurgical industry
Blackwood is a renewable energy technology company focusing on biomass torrefaction and carbonization. Our proprietary FlashTor® technology offers a cost effective way to enable large scale fossil coal replacement by renewable biomass. The FlashTor® torrefaction technology is proven at industrial scale and has been successfully deployed in two black pellet plants in Thailand.
Torrefaction can be instrumental in the decarbonization of coal-using industries. Torrefied biomass (aka black pellets, bio-coal or biocarbon) can be used as drop-in fuel replacement of fossil coal in power and heat generation, steel production and other metallurgical processes. In the future it can also be the preferred feedstock for large scale bio-refineries using entrained flow gasification and Fischer-Tropsch synthesis to produce SAF or other bio-fuels.
Blackwood is seeking international partnerships to roll-out its leading torrefaction technology. We have partnered with TTCL Public Company Ltd to develop torrefied pellet plants in Southeast Asia using wood residues and agricultural waste. TTCL is a Thai EPC and investment company listed on the Thailand stock exchange. Since September 2020, TTCL is the majority shareholder of Blackwood. Blackwood has also signed a licensing agreement with South African utility Eskom for roll-out of torrefaction plants in the SADC region in Southern Africa.
Together with TTCL we built a first FlashTor® torrefaction demonstration plant in Thailand in 2022. The plant is producing test volumes of regular black pellets and SuperBlack® pellets for power stations, steel plants and other industrial users of fossil coal. In order to fulfill the demand for larger commercial volumes of black and biocarbon pellets, TTCL decided to build a first commercial FlashTor® plant in Thailand. This plant was built in 2023-24 and started production in Q4 of 2024.
The FlashTor® torrefaction process improves the fuel characteristics of biomass. Torrefaction increases the calorific value, improves the grindability and reduces the biological activity of the biomass. These benefits make it possible for coal users to use biomass as a drop-in replacement for thermal coal. In order to prove the benefits of torrefied pellets, Blackwood and its predecessor Topell Energy have conducted multiple co-firing tests with power station operators in Europe, South Africa and Japan. For example the Amer 8 & 9 power stations of RWE Generation in the Netherlands and the Hanasaari & Salmisaari power stations of Helen Oy in Finland have successfully co-fired our regular black pellets produced with our technology.
In addition to the power station tests, we have extensively tested the burning and milling behavior of torrefied pellets in the RT&D centre of Eskom in Johannesburg as well as with coal milling equipment suppliers. The conclusion of these test programs was indeed that black pellets can replace fossil coal in pulverized coal power stations using the existing coal infrastructure.
The FlashTor® carbonization process turns biomass into a drop-in replacement for metallurgical coal. The resulting SuperBlack® pellets have a higher calorific value and increased fixed carbon content. The flexibility of the i>FlashTor® technology makes it possible to produce a wide range of SuperBlack® biocarbon qualities. SuperBlack® biocarbon has been successfully tested as pci coal replacement in blast furnaces of steel plants and as reducing agent in other metallurgical processes.
The development of Blackwood’s proprietary FlashTor® torrefaction technology was started by our predecessor Topell Energy in 2008. Since then our team has continued improving and optimizing the technology. The key benefits of the FlashTor® technology are its flexibility, scalability and its optimal process control. As a result the technology is the ideal choice for industrial scale biomass torrefaction and carbonization.
