From waste to watts: energy recovery plant goes live

Imagine turning industrial waste into enough electricity to power thousands of homes. That ambition is now a reality at a new energy recovery plant built by E.ON for one of our major manufacturing customers.

At the heart of this new system is the production of carbon black – a fine, dark black powder that plays a key role in lithium-ion batteries, including those used in electric vehicles and energy storage.

Carbon black production naturally creates something called syngas — a mixture of mainly hydrogen and carbon monoxide that can itself be used as an energy source. So instead of letting that energy go unused, our new plant in Willebroek, Belgium, captures it and uses it to drive a turbine to generate electricity. In short, it turns a by-product of the production process into useful power.

Built, owned and operated by E.ON, the 29MW installation at Imerys’ Willebroek site – the world’s leading production facility of carbon black – generates enough power for the entire site, with surplus power fed into the public grid – it’s equivalent to the annual energy consumption of around 40,000 homes. It’s energy recovery in action – capturing energy that might otherwise be lost and using it to help power the site and the grid.

And as demand for electrification grows across Europe, especially with an accelerated transition to electric mobility, making the production process more efficient matters more than ever.

Cleaner, smarter industrial energy

There is another important part to the story too. The installation includes advanced flue gas treatment unit to help reduce nitrogen oxide and sulphur oxide emissions – setting a new standard for air quality management at an industrial scale.

A blueprint for future industry

This project shows how tailored energy infrastructure can help major industrial customers make better use of what is already available on site, reduce waste and improve efficiency. For Imerys, it is another step towards making its production process more efficient. For the wider grid it’s transformed a by-product into a source of reliable, local power.