At Händelö Eco-Industrial Park (HEIP) in Norrköping in Sweden, a powerful industrial urban symbiosis has developed during 20 years. It is based on the idea of utilizing synergies between energy companies and process industry, to use each other’s by-products and residual products as raw materials.
Many circular streams
Wooden chip and waste from households and businesses in the municipality of Norrköping are used in E.ON’s combined heat and power plant, which supply the city of Norrköping with electricity and district heating. Residual steam from the cogeneration plant is sent to Lantmännen Agroetanol, the largest biorefinery in the Nordic countries, where three main products are produced: fuel ethanol, animal feed and carbonic dioxide. The raw materials primarily consist of grain but also of expired bread and dough residues from the food industry. The carbon dioxide formed during production is sent to Norlic (a facility jointly owned by Linde and Lantmännen Agroetanol) and converted into carbonic acid which is used in the food industry. Residual products from the production of ethanol are turned into protein-rich fodder which is returned to farmers who provide feedstock for the biorefinery.
Other actors involved in HEIP are the port of Norrköping, which receives goods for the various actors and ships goods to other cities, the municipality with whom HEIP jointly has developed a process aimed to attract companies within bioeconomy, Nodra, which is responsible for the purification of household water in Norrköping and the sewage in the area and the Division of Environmental Technology at Linköping University. What makes the industrial park an interesting area of study is the collaborative power as a result of the close collaboration between industry, municipality and academia.
Händelö Eco-Industrial Park gives many business advantages
When asked to describe the business advantages of Händelö Eco-Industrial Park the company Lantmännen Agroetanol, mentions among others:
· High resource efficiency in the cluster
· Direct financial gains
· Environmental benefits
· High climate values
· Increased ability to attract competent staff
More companies which lead to new biobased and circular products is a goal
Even though the existing park has come a long way, the development possibilities are still great and there is a wish to attract more environment friendly companies to Händelö, as well as show the way for what is possible to achieve within the growing bioeconomy. In order to strengthen the work within HEIP certain activities are run in project form. These activities are financed by the main actors as well as the European Regional Development Fund. The goal is to create conditions for integrating more companies and businesses into the industrial park that can lead to new products with an emphasis on a biobased and circular economy. Examples of activities included in the project are:
· Use the results of the project work to better utilize the resource and energy flows at Händelö.
· Identify and attract companies with knowledge of refining the industrial park’s resource streams into finished products to move to Norrköping.
· Investigate possibilities for locating test bed operations at Händelö Eco-Industrial Park
For more detailed information about Händelö Eco-Industrial Park please see https://heip.se/en/
This article is written within the project Green Industrial Areas which is partly financed by Interreg Baltic Sea Region.
